RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

WHERE IS THE AUDIENCE? Tables 3 to 6 show some results from recent surveys . 1п each survey a representative sample of people have been askeđ puestions about radio listening and TV viewing habits , and about other aspects of their media behavior , tncluded among these guestions is one about listening to foreign radio . Awareness of the existence of international radio is also measured , as is the frequency with which people listen . Listening to international radio is usually a less freguent activity than listening to domestic services and the "regular" auđience figures used here denote those who listen to the respective service at least once рег week . To achieve large audiences , international broadcasters need to broadcast in major local languages . Table 7 shows the hours broadcast in major languages by the top twenty international broadcasters . Note in particular how all or most of them broadcast in English , Spanish , Arabic , German , French , Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese . Swahili, Hindi , Bengali, Urdu and Persian have also become major international broadcast languages. In Arab countries shown In Table 4, Arabic language broađcasting đominates , although there are significant audiences for French language broadcasts in Tunisia and Horocco . Broadcasts from other Arab countries are almost always the most popular , with Saudi Arablan broadcasts leading overall. Broađcasts , mainly of Islamic programmes , particularly at times of fasting and pilgrimage, reach a wide audience in the Arab worlđ, although at the western extremity , reception problems probably reduce the audience. Among broadcasters from non-Arab sources, the BBC and Radio Monte Carlo Middle East, both with powerful mediumwave transmitters on Cyprus , compete for the leading position . In the area encloseđ by Lebanon in the North and Egypt in the South RMCME is in a strong lead . It is a very mixed picture in Asia (see Table 5). in the Inđian sub-continent, there are sizable audiences for broadcasts from neighboring countries and for the BBC in mđigenous languages . Of the estimated 120 million regular listeners to the BBC worldwide , its audience research department calculates that more than one third are in India , Pakistan and Bangladesh. And while there is a large audience for the BBC in English , the audience to programmes in the six sub-continent languages used by the BBC is many times larger . Other broađcasters perform more modestly . Even Radio Moscow which broadcasts in 12 sub-continental languages reaches only a relatively small