TEMPORAL REGULARITIES OF THE URBAN TV AUDIENCE IN RUSSIA (some results of audience monitoring in 1994-96)

Abstract

Using on the one hand results of three year audience monitoring made by RUSSIAN RESEARCH (British company working in Russia), and on the other hand the system approach to TV audience theory, the author of article seeks to demonstrate the existence of strong rhythms in the urban TV audience behaviour in Russia. The TV audience is considered as a system and its main quantitative parameters as individual TV viewing function, audience volume, daily reach, average TV viewing time and some other ones are defined. The propor­tionality between average TV viewing time and average audience volume is mentioned. Three levels of the cyclic recurrence in TV audience behaviour are considered: day cycle, week cycle and year (or season) cycle. Then every cycle is scrupulously described. Here the main method of analysis is to find the stable maximums and minimums of temporal function of one or other audience parameter.At the day cycle on workdays there are three stable maximums (two in the morning and one in the evening) and two stable minimums (one in the morning and another one in the night) of the audience volume. All of them appear in the same time intervals every workday. Besides there are some non stable maximums and minimums that appear in the same time intervals but not every day.On weekend there are two stable maximums (one in the morning, and another one in the evening), and two stable minimums (one in the afternoon, and another one in the night). There are also some non stable maximums and minimums. One of these maximums appears regularly in winter season. Both on workdays and on weekend the TV viewing in the morning is linked with the breakfast. Besides many people take their lunch and watch TV at the same time more often on weekend in winter season. These facts were obtained in the RTR Audience Research Depart­ment in 1994. There is some difference in TV audience behaviour on different weekdays. The cluster analysis of daily audience distribution showed that the strongest link exists between audience behaviour on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. On Mondays normally fewer people watch TV. On Friday evenings the audience size achieves its highest point during the week. There is also some difference between Saturday and Sunday TV audience distributions. The difference between TV viewing in different seasons of the year exists too. On workdays this difference is not so important, but on weekend they observe regular season variations of all integral parameters of the TV audience in urban Russia. This three level cyclic recurrence being very regular, there are some irregular factors that exert influence on TV audience rhythms in modern Russia. The main factor could be defined as deep structural changes in Russian society influencing the time budget and values of many social groups.Temporal regularities described in the article open new ways to forecast the behaviour (to some extent of course) of the urban TV audience in Russia in nearest future.