Abstract:

The paper gives illustrations of new types of analyses and findings of television audience behaviour and how the segmentation analysis is used in programme planning and scheduling. The findings are based on analysing the respondent -level data of metered audience measurement. In 1991 1992 and 1993 the segmentation analyses were carried out on the basis of people meter sample of over 1000 persons representing the population of 10 years of age or older. The purpose of the analyses has been to divide the Finnish population into TV audience segments which have different viewing behaviour 'models', and so to better understand the TV audience. The Finnish television audience has been now, this year, segmented for the fourth time. The first segmentation was canied out in 1991 and the results were presented during the ESOMAR/ARF Worldwide Broadcast Audience Research Symposium held in Toronto, 01-Mar lune 1992. The results of the 1993 segmentation were presented at the ESOMAR/ARF Worldwide Broadcast Audience Research Symposium in Paris, lst-4th May 1994. We now have the preliminary results of the segmentation of the data of 1994. In this paper it is described in chapter 2 how we use the TV audience segments as the main tool in developing channel coordination and programme scheduling. Although we have only two channels at our disposal, it's quite problematic to schedule those channels so that programmes for the same TV audience segments are not offered on both channels at the same time. We have also been able to combine social attitudes and values with TV viewing as additional properties of TV audience segments and although the analysis is in it's initial stage, they have proved to be very useful tools in scheduling and programme planning.