With only one media monitoring company – AGB – refereeing the TV ratings game in Ukraine, one might think that disputes over the popularity of TV channels here would be over once and for all. But they're not.
On May 11 the Post received a letter from Oleksandr Rodnyansky, general director of Studio 1+1, in which he described several of AGB's ratings findings as questionable. 1+1 is one of Ukraine's most popular channels.
'Recent events have made us doubt the propriety of [AGB Ukraine] results we receive,' Rodnyansky wrote in his letter. However, in an interview with the Post later, Rodnyansky said he doubted AGB was intentionally interfering with the data from its People Meter TV ratings monitoring system.
AGB managing director Dmitry Dutchyn said it was too early for him comment on the letter, but acknowledged that AGB was looking into Rodnyansky's allegations.
'Our comment will depend on what our investigation shows,' Dutchyn said.
According to Rodnyansky's letter, in the last six months there have been two 'illogical' dips in 1+1's ratings, one in September and one in April, and these dips led him to suspect there might be inaccuracies in AGB's data.
'Such fluctuations don't have a logical explanation,' Rodnyansky wrote.
Rodnyansky said the suspicious dips coincide with times when advertisers are drawing up their budgets. The dips occurred even though 1+1 had made no significant changes to its programming schedule, he said.
But Rodnyansky shied away from outright allegations of fraud on the part of AGB, saying instead that the problem lay with the way AGB goes about collecting its data.
'We don't doubt the veracity of AGB as a company, but we do doubt the veracity of the data it provides, particularly the sampling used in the research,' he said.
According to Dutchyn, Rodnyansky's letter betrays a lack of understanding about how the ad market works in Ukraine.
'First of all, there are no set times when advertisers decide their ad budgets … this letter was rather emotional actually,' Dutchyn said.
Rodnyansky disagrees. According to him, AGB's sampling 'does not reflect actual ethnic and regional peculiarities' and 'does not represent the actual proportions of the Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking population.'
AGB's 603 People Meters have been installed in the country's major population centers. The number of meters in each city is in proportion to the size of its population.
However, most of the cities with populations over 1 million are located in the largely Russian-speaking eastern region of the country. The large eastern cities of Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Kharkiv contain 42, 44 and 56 People Meters, respectively.
In contrast, in the mostly Ukrainian-speaking west, there are no cities with populations over 1 million. Lviv, the largest western city, has only 30 People Meters.
According to Rodnyansky, the distribution of People Meters means that 35 percent of the homes surveyed are Ukrainian-speaking and 65 percent Russian-speaking. However, Rodnyansky contends that probably 50 percent of the country is Ukrainian-speaking, when the less densely populated (and unsurveyed) rural areas are factored in.
Rodnyansky claims this sampling inaccuracy works in favor of 1+1's greatest rival, Inter, which airs programs primarily in Russian.
'We live in a bilingual, bicultural country – that has to be taken into account,' Rodnyansky said.
'We do take that into account,' Dutchyn countered. 'The language spoken in a family is one of those variables that is strictly controlled, and we do believe our figures are accurate,' he said. 'I think the entire dispute will be over once our investigation is completed.'
Iryna Novikova, a sociologist at the STB channel, said she also has reservations about AGB's data.
'As a sociologist I personally have questions about [AGB's] panel. It simply doesn't meet [the necessary] standards. The fact is that nobody can check their data – they are the only ones who have [direct access] to the People Meter data.'
