Two and a half years after the effective launch of DTT, on June 24, the HACA organized a round table on the economic viability of DTT players, attended by all television channels and operators, representatives of the ministries of economy and finance, media communication and Francophonie, the FSDP, and the CSP.
The first observation was that the Ivorian advertising market is still in its infancy: with an estimated value of just over 10 billion CFA francs, it cannot yet cover the needs of all DTT channels, each of which invests several billion CFA francs each year to cover their operating costs.
For all the private DTT channels that spoke during this round table, the sharing of license fees between public and private channels and the exemption or reduction of fees paid to the IDT are the first measures to be taken to help them survive, especially since the health crisis has not made things any easier for over a year.
This central issue of the balance between public service and private channels
is certainly universal, but it is not the only difficulty facing Ivorian private channels
. Analog switch-off repeatedly postponed
Despite various announcements predicting the switch-off of analog broadcasting by the end of the first quarter of 2021 at the latest
, this has still not come into effect.
DTT remains completely unknown to the majority of Ivorians. In the city of Abidjan, according to a study published by Médiamétrie last March, 56.5% of people
are unfamiliar with DTT. This figure is likely to be even higher in the interior of the country.
There have been numerous information campaigns, but they have probably been insufficient to get the message across to the entire population. The benefits of DTT (image and sound quality, free programs once the decoder has been purchased, exclusive Ivorian content, etc.) are unknown to the majority of the population.
For the time being, private DTT channels are therefore mainly distributed via satellite or digital in a much more competitive and complex environment, where none of the advantages of DTT are exploited. This is becoming a real concern for private channels.
Audience measurement that is not yet universally accepted
At a recent business meeting, RTI presented the results of several studies circulating on the Ivorian market. Africascope, conducted twice a year by KANTAR, the Omedia/Médiamétrie study, and the MCMY study conducted between January and March 2021
This multiplicity of studies, whose results can sometimes be contradictory, confuses advertisers and slows down their determination to invest in television.
Omedia/Mediamétrie has been campaigning for five years for a single, consensual audience measurement system that is controlled and validated by all. To continue moving forward, it launched a permanent audience study over a year ago, involving 560 people each month, with the support of CANAL+, Life TV, Orange, Havas, and others.
The other players, who have remained on the sidelines, are questioning, sometimes openly, the methodology used to collect information, the size of the sample, and even the legitimacy of Omedia/Médiamétrie to carry out this study, on the grounds that CANAL+ is a shareholder of Médiamétrie in France.*
However, everyone agrees that the existence of a credible and consensual audience measurement system is a prerequisite for the development of both private and public TV channels, and they support the public authorities in their goal of implementing a sustainable solution.
Sharing the license fee, reducing broadcasting costs, information campaigns on the benefits of DTT, the switch-off of analog, reliable and universally recognized audience measurement… the road to viability for private channels is still long and clearly cannot be achieved without the intervention of the public authorities and the support and assistance of the State.