According to rating numbers quoted by Nelson Bocaranda in his Runrunes column and corrected in the radio today for some small details, the strategy of the Government to control the broadcast media is not going very well. First off, RCTV received an incredible 80% rating on Sunday night, as VTV got 9% and Globovision 4.1% of the Nielsen ratings. Globovison was of course broadcasting the RCTV signal anyway, so the number of TV’s tuning in to the watch the last brodcast of RCTV was truly outstanding.
And the situation for the Government has not improved since. Yesterday, Venevision had a 33.5% rating, followed by Globovision with 16.3%, Televen 11.5%, VTV 7.3% TVES 5.6%, Meridiano 1.9% and cable TV 10.3%, with the regionals channels receiving 13.7% of the audience.
The numbers for improvised TVES are simply the pits. After a first day of 10.2% rating, it dropped to 7.2% the second day and was only 5.6% on its third day, as viewers find little of entertainment value in the new TV channel, led by the former announcer of Radio Havana.
Thus, Venevision has picked up market share, despite the bad taste it left in everyone’s mouth and Globovision appears to be the main beneficiary o RCTV’s disappearance jumping from 3.8% average up to last Sunday for the year of 2007, to 16.3% market share. Venevision’s average so far in 2007 had been 29%. Cable TV appears to be another beneficiary of RCTV’s demise.
The one clear conclusion is that the Government’s TV stations gained very little since last Sunday. It takes more than a salsa expert loyal to the revolution and confiscating RCTV’s equipment to set up a TV station appealing to the general public in Venezuela, Pro-Chavez or otherwise.
The Devil's Excrement 
May 8, 2014 at 1:35 pm
[…] traditional channels and newspapers. In fact RCTV, a TV channel sympathetic to the opposition, had the highest ratings nationwide. So what did Chavez do? In 2007 he took away RCTV’s license and sent his thugs to take over […]