Audience Satisfaction with Ethiopian Television Evening Amharic Program
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Date
2005-02
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Television with its audiovisual nature plays a great role in presenting events within their contexts
to its audiences. Similarly, ETV has been serving its audiences since its establishment in 1964.
Although audiences continue watching ETV, they are usually heard airing their dissatisfaction
regarding the quality of ETV services. Despite the fact that audience satisfaction study is
invaluable, it is difficult to get such a comprehensive research in Ethiopia. This paper, therefore,
aims at investigating how the complaints of audiences of ETV evening Amharic program are
deeper. That is, it tries to assess the satisfaction/dissatisfaction level of audiences with the
programs. The study focuses on Amharic language since most of ETV’s airtime is covered by
this language.
The subjects of the study are 300 TV viewers of Bahir Dar, Dessie and Gondar towns residents
who have television sets and pay annual service charge. Most of the respondents are young
people. Audience satisfaction studies are usually done using survey methods. As a result, a
questionnaire, to find out the audiences’ level of satisfaction based on Likert’s scales, is used to
collect the required data. Mean scores of satisfaction scales and percentages of respondents are
used for the analysis and interpretation of the data. The questions are analyzed in terms of eleven
factors that affect audiences’ gratifications. The results, however, represent tendencies rather than
actual facts because they are based on personal opinions and predispositions.
The degree of gratification (satisfaction, dissatisfaction or neutral) is determined based on three
assumptions that basis on the mean scores of responses on satisfaction scales. Accordingly, the
main findings are the following. Audiences’ level of satisfaction is very low. They show their
dissatisfaction with the overall services of the channel. Most of the programs lack credibility.
Moreover, among the programs Local News and Current Affairs reports and Advertisements are
the most dissatisfying programs. Only Q&A, Sport and ’50 Lemon’ programs are relatively the
most satisfying ones. Furthermore, most of the audiences watch ETV either as a habit or due to
lack of an alternative channel.
Hence, looking through these results, it is possible to say that ETV Amharic programs are unable
to gratify its audiences by producing and broadcasting programs that go with the needs of its
viewers.
All these indicate that ETV, being the only medium in the country, to gratify its audiences,
should exert more efforts to improve its programs in line with the needs of its viewers.
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Ethiopian Television