Swiss radio and television receives the best ratings since measurements began
BAKOM has published the latest report from its ongoing audience survey on the use and evaluation of private and public broadcasting in 2017. The study concludes that the public is satisfied with the radio and television programs they watch, with the quality of SRG programming rated higher than that of private providers.
As in the Previous years the SRG radio stations are rated best by a slight margin (3.9 on average on a scale of 1 "very poor" to 5 "very good"). Users once again rated the quality of regional TV stations, SRG TV stations and SRG radio stations better than in previous years.
This year, the SRG television channels (3.8) were rated better overall than the local radio stations (3.7) for the first time. The regional television offerings were rated positively (with 3.5 above the neutral scale average of 3), but in terms of overall satisfaction they were behind the SRG offerings and the offerings of the local radio stations. The high level of professionalism and the information content play a decisive role in the approval of SRG radio and television stations. In the case of local radio stations and regional television, the local connection is the key benefit and is appreciated accordingly by viewers and listeners. In addition to the subjective ratings by the audience, the higher acceptance of SRG offerings is also reflected in the usage statistics.
The findings of the study are based on a representative telephone survey conducted by the survey institute DemoSCOPE in spring 2017 with 3612 respondents aged 15 and over in all four language regions of Switzerland. The continuous survey of quality ratings by the public is intended to answer the question of how the population living in Switzerland rates the radio and television services they use. The results of the survey, which has been conducted annually since 2009 (always at least 3,600 people), show remarkable stability at a high level.
The public debate about the value of SRG offerings has not had a negative impact on the assessment of the quality of offerings. Compared to the previous year, "overall satisfaction" (3.9) with SRG television services has even increased significantly: The following assessment criteria are significantly higher on average than the previous year: 'professionalism' (4.1), 'balance' (3.7), 'credibility' (4.1) and 'entertaining' (4.1). The assessment of SRG radio services was slightly better than in the previous year in all assessment dimensions. However, only "local relevance" (3.3) and the sum of the ratings (27.4) were rated significantly better.
