by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) There is not enough time to do or embark on a new establishment survey before the National Association of Broadcasters’ (NAB) resignation from the South African Audience Research Foundation (Saarf) kicks in at the end of year, Saarf’s interim CEO, Ettiene van den Berg, said in Durban today.
At the end of year, the NAB will go its own way and do its own TV and radio market research in South Africa. This follows the 
walk-out last year of the NAB from Saarf, prompted by frustration that it only had two places on the Saarf board that consists of representatives of the media owners, advertisers, media planners and marketers.
The broadcasters contribute the majority of funding to Saarf (78% of the total, according to the NAB) and they were unhappy with how the TAMS television audience research was being conducted.
Van den Berg said today at the Durban release of the AMPS research for 2013 that discussions between the stakeholders were still on the go and that the NAB has agreed in principle to stick with Amps or an establishment survey in some form – and to move forward with Saarf on this issue next year.
“Everyone agrees that we need to change and the decision will be issued in a joint press release,” said Van den Berg, who is Saarf CEO for this year in its transition period after the former head, Paul Haupt, retired recently. “The elephants in the room are ownership – Saarf would be prefer to have an independent body – and funding. Saarf sits in the middle of the marketers and the broadcasters (on this issue).”
There is no new agreement in place at the moment, he said, and at the end of the year – as things stand – Amps officially ceases to exist and Saarf’s contract with Nielsen (which does the survey on behalf of Saarf) will come to an end.
Meanwhile, the release of the Amps figures for 2013 shows a picture of general stability for media. The main trends (bearing in mind that this for the large urban areas and only the last half of 2013 is comparable to the last half of 2012 – and not full year – because of the SA population adjustment made last year after the national 2011 Census):
- There was no significant change in any individual newspaper while the same was true for most magazine titles (Drum, Bona and Kuier were all up).
- TV was similarly stable while both DStv and community TV (particularly Soweto TV, Bay TV and 1KZNTV) were up significantly.
- There was little change in radio audiences although commercial radio was up in both Durban (especially Vuma FM and Ukhozi) and Gauteng while community radio was down in these markets.
- Internet usage was up but online media access was still very low. Tablets in homes were up but the percentage (3.7% of the sample size) was still very low.
- Cellphone usage was up – as was radio listenership on cellphones.
The sample size was 25 444 people aged 15 years and older and, the survey found, there was a slight increase in the LSM 8-10 top-earning group and a significant increase in people earning more than R20 000 a month.
The main news and sports events in the survey period include various strikes, the arrest of Oscar Pistorius, the Boston Marathon bombings, Nkandlagate, the Nairobi Mall attack, Nelson Mandela’s death and the ICC Champions Trophy and 2014 Soccer World Cup qualifier.
On the one hand, the stability of the Amps readership and audience figures is welcome news – especially for newspapers, which have been suffering sustained circulation declines in recent years. On the other hand, my thoughts last year on the release of the 2012 Amps figures may still be relevant:
What clouds our assessment of ABC v Amps is the fact that there is debate around how many people are reading a single copy of a paper (many say the Amps estimates are too high). On the other hand, we also know that in times of economic hardship, more people – especially in low LSM-groups – do share a single copy so this is consistent with what we see in the Daily Sun – where circulation is in decline and its readership is stable…
…While some say that comparing and bringing together Amps and ABC figures is a game with numbers that can be shaped to suit any publisher’s purpose, I think we can discern some big trends here:
– That buying newspapers is certainly in decline;
– But that the attitudes to reading traditionally (on paper) have not shifted as dramatically as in other more developed markets. South Africans are still largely happy to get their news on paper!
– If this is true – and, as Amps says, those people reading online and mobile are still reading traditionally – we have to question the supposition that South – Africans are buying fewer newspapers because they are getting their news digitally?
– Which leads us to two really scary questions: a). Are South Africans perhaps abandoning buying newspapers because the content is irrelevant and uninteresting to them rather than preferring to get it digitally?; and b). Are those that are abandoning buying newspapers perhaps not replacing this with a digital platform? Perhaps their appetite for local news is less.
South Africa’s leading media commentator Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) offers intelligence on media, old and new. Reprinted from her site Grubstreet. This piece was published first on Journalism.co.za, the website of Wits University’s journalism school.
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