RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

Milan Timotić

WHO ARE RADIO LISTENERS AND TELEVISION VIEWERS?

However simple this question may seem, it is extremely difficult to arrive at a complete and sufficiently precise and reliable answer. It is usuafiy the long and painstaking task of research workers, and at the same time extremely expensive, requiring well-planned and organizationally complicated conducting of polls. The RTB programme and audience researcn centre has been carrying out research for years on the number of radio listeners and television viewers on the basis of a sample. This research is known in the field and to the public as »The Daily Barometar« and it already has a reputable tradition of research. It is almost impossible to make апу serious programme venture without relying on the statistics gathered by this research. Thus, for example, the broadcasting time of the radio and television news was moved fonvards half an hour only after several sessions of examination of the audience. BASIC INFORMATION ON RESEARCH Before we attempt to answer the question of who radio listeners and television viewers are, what the age and educational pattems of the population who spend time with radio and television programmes аге - we shah briefly mention some basic facts on research to whose statistics we refer. The Daily Barometar (abbrev. DB) is a survey usuafly applied twice a уеаг on a sample*** of the population of 15 years of age and more and lasting each time for 14 days without a break so that it encompasses broadcasts whose broadcasting cycle is seven or fourteen days. The survey is performed in 81 settlements in Serbia with its Autonomous Provinces and includes about 1000 respondents daily. During one period of survey iasting fourteen days the settlements chosen do not change but the respondents are always other people, so that in a single series contact is made with 14,000-15,000 citizens over 15 years of age.

*** А two-stage stratified cluster sample of flats is selected in which all peop!e over 15 years of age аге questioned without taking into account whether they аге members of the household, tenants, sub-tenants etc. Ву using the »cut-off« method small villages аге excluded from the population, but their total number of inhabitants is not essentially lowered. Thus of the 2,182,000 flats in Serbia with the Autonomous Provinces from the basic set only 6.14 per cent of flats аге excluded, leaving 2,048,000 flats. In this way, the number of settlements - ргкпагу sample units - is considerably reduced. In the first stage of the selection villages are classified into the inhabitants strata according to size, and in the second flats the addresses of household owners or legal tenants. Villages аге selected according to tables of random numbers, and the codes of the secondary units аге systematically selected by an IBM 360 computer.

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