ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF TELENOVELA ON TELEVISION VIEWERSHIP: A STUDY OF UNITED TELEVISION (UTV)

Abstract

Television provides variety of cherished programmes and valuable content which serve the purpose of education, information, relaxation and entertainment; and has become an integral and vital medium today. Television stations sell out product to audience in a form of programmes. One of the popular programmes on television today in Ghana is telenovelas. Programme managers plan programmes that best attract viewers. Private television stations generate revenue exclusively by selling air time for advertisement. The value of air time depends on the number of viewers the station have (Perino and Schulze, 2003). Television stations can only achieve this objective only when their programmes attract maximum viewership. This study assessed the impact telenovelas have on television viewership; particularly it examined the impact of the telecast of telenovelas on UTV viewership. The study used quantitative research design that surveyed 100 traders at Kumasi central market. Self-administered questionnaires were used to gather data for the study. All 100 questionnaires were used for the analysis. The results show that majority of the respondents enjoy watching UTV’s telenovelas but this is only a contributing factor to their market share. There is another contributing factor which is the language of broadcast. Most of the respondents’ survey confirmed they watch UTV because of their language of broadcast. Also many of them said they will continue watching UTV even in the absence of telenovelas. Looking at these results, it vi means that the market share and popularity of UTV does not solely depend on the telenovelas they telecast.