Instrument for measuring media consumption in the Canary Islands

Abstract

It is essential for the complete study of audiovisual communication media, the use that people make of each of them. In the Canarian case, perhaps the remoteness of the islands with respect to the metropolis has penalized and conditioned this type of work. Specific research on reception in the autonomous community of the Canary Islands has only just begun and, as is often the case in a traditional way, audience studies have only been carried out from the economic perspective of the advertising market.

Even so, the Canary Islands at the end of 1996 were not yet included in the circuits and countries of audience studies of the Spanish territory. The company that supplies the national audimetry data did not have any sample of the Canarian population; thus, the television program monitoring figures provided refer only to the population of the peninsula and the Balearic Islands, excluding the Canary Islands.

Although it is to be expected that a sample of the only autonomous community that is not represented in this type of audience studies will be implemented soon, we must add that the main reasons for the Canary Islands to be excluded from the audience figures are fundamentally economic: companies Those who support audience studies using the audimeter method do not find it profitable to maintain an audimetry system, which is very expensive, to know a series of data that, in the general volume of the audiovisual business, represents a very small percentage.

In addition, the data provided by the audiometer-controlled audience is not very significant from a socioeconomic point of view, when the selected sample of the audience is very small, as is the case in an autonomous community.

Following the example of other countries, the audimeter is only used for measurements within very large territories where local data are drowned out by the national total, in addition to not representing absolutely each of the localities. In these cases, the most logical solution is to use other more economical means of audience measurement such as the listening diary, coincidental telephone calls or the survey.