BNT continues to be the most trusted media in Bulgaria
Bulgarian National Television’s (BNT) continues to be the most trusted media in the country for news and current affairs, a survey by “Global Metrics”, a marketing research and analysis agency shows.
The data confirms the leading role of the public service broadcaster, after BNT received recognition in June from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. Their report for 2020 states that 71% of those surveyed trust the news of the public media. This is the highest percentage of trust in a Bulgarian TV broadcaster and comes amidst a -7% (33% / 40%) decline in confidence in information content as a whole, compared to last year.
According to the most recent Global Metrics survey from November 2020, compared to the one conducted by the same agency in July 2020, viewers who report a positive change in BNT’s content hasincreased from 33% to 46.5% and the public service broadcaster receives the approval of almost every second Bulgarian. Most often, the viewers of the BNT news programmes share positive attitudes about the change in the national television. There is also a change in the opinion among the viewers of the competitive TV channels.
According to the survey, viewers with higher education represent the largest share of the audience of the BNT central news cast compared to the profile of the audience of direct competitors. 33% of the viewers who most often watch "Around the world and in the country" newscast at 8 pm have higher education, in comparison to 25% and 27% for the other two TV channels from the top three.
The achieved peoplemetric results from all news programmes on the leading TV channels for the first three months of the TV season (September - November 2020), measured by GARB Audience Measurement Bulgaria (GARB), confirm the distribution of viewers by education in the demographic profile of the audience. of news content. The share of highly educated viewers from the audience of "Around the World and in Bulgaria" is 44.3%, compared to 29.5% and 27.6% of the audience of news programmes of direct competitors. For comparison, the share of people with higher education is only 27% of the population in the country (National Statistics), and of the television audience as a whole in the slot of the BNT news programmes - 29.8% (GARB).
The data from the survey also show that the public service broadcaster has leading positions in the major district cities. The forecasts re that this trend will get stronger after the good results of the "Bulgaria in 60 minutes" show, which started this autumn. The show is hosted by Mariana Vekilska and is the only one on the national air, which daily addresses impressive stories and important topics for the residents outside the capital city and is produced with the teams of the BNT regional centres. Similar new formats, including "The World and We", "BNT at 60", "My Playlist", "BG Version", "The Last Wins" and others, marked a total increase of 14% in viewer approval in November 2020 compared to July 2020, the results of the survey show.
The data from the nationally representative survey of “Global Metrics” among 1,372 adult respondents are based on 1,125 respondents who watch news on television at least twice a week. The data from the nationally representative peoplemetric panel of GARB Audience Measurement Bulgaria are based on 2400 respondents (1000 households) over 4 years of age living in households with an active television set.
The newsroom with the greatest public trust says “bye-bye” to 2020 after an a number of more achievements. The teams of "Around the World and in Bulgaria" unquestionably produced the most complete and high-quality coverage of the US elections, and the podcast "American Dream" is among the most listened topics and continues with new episodes until the inauguration of Joe Biden. All episodes can be listened to on BNT Podcast channels on all official audio content platforms, as well as on the BNT website.
The public service broadcaster was also a leading source of information for almost every second Bulgarian (Trend data) related to the COVID-19 pandemic. It broadcast all the briefings of the coronavirus task force and provided picture for other television channels and electronic media in the country. Earlier this year, the central newscast "Around the World and in Bulgaria" marked 60 years of television news in Bulgaria, and BNT presenters and reporters shared their experience in the MeGra media podcast in 10 episodes.
In 2020, the BNT website also recorded the fastest growing audience among users of news content. The BNT News application climbed to first place in the news sections of the AppStore and GooglePlay in the first month after its launch and continues to be among the most downloaded applications for news and customised content.
BNT's news site also saw an increase in all indicators of visits. In the past year, users have increased by 77%, with new users by 74% more, sessions with a growth of 83%, and page views (page visits from the site) by 122% and increased from 13, 7 million for 2019 to 30.5 million for 2020. The highest traffic was reported in March and April, at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, when visits amounted to over 5,300,000 and was a clear sign of trust in the news of the public media and the development of new platforms.
