Windhoek
The Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) yesterday signed an agreement with a Swedish online research company, named Nepa, for the purpose of providing audience research services to the NBC.
NBC and Nepa will set up a media panel in Namibia that will start in January 2016 through which TV viewers and radio listeners will be engaged to share their content and opinions on scheduling, content and advertising.
“Their opinions will be essential to NBC in its mission to create the best content for its stakeholders. As a first step, NBC will create its own audience media consumption research. Feedback on this engagement is expected to be availed by March next year,” NBC director general Stanley Similo remarked. He said the announcement is aimed at highlighting the importance and essence of research within the industry: “There is absolutely no way that we will be able to produce and procure programmes which appeal to the listeners and viewers without results from audience research findings.” Similo said such data, which is collected through proven processes, will make their tasks easier and is critical to them as managers and administrators of programmes, because it will put focus on what they should concentrate on when producing programmes.
He explained that audience research is a systematic and accurate way of finding out how big an audience is and what their preference are.
“That information helps every business in taking critical decisions. Without such data an organisation such as NBC will have difficulties in knowing how many people tune into a programme,” he clarified.
Similo said it is for this reason that audience research remains key to the operations of the broadcaster, as they also need to specify the number of eyeballs watching specific programmes at specific times when they sell adverts on various time-slots.
He said their training unit identified the need for in-depth research some time back and the aspect of audience research has become a strategic business imperative, hence their partnership with Nepa.
He said the opinions of its audience are essential to NBC in its mission to create the best content on the continent. Global Media Nepa account manager Niat Sebhatu said the NBC media panel will be the first of its kind for Nepa in Africa and that they are proud and honoured to have been chosen by NBC as research partners.
Sebhatu said the first step is for NBC to create its own audience media consumption research unit, which is envisioned to be in place by March 2016.