ITC Publishes The Public’s View

The ITC has today published its annual survey on television, The Public’s View 1993. The results focus on the ITC’s responsibilities for programme standards.

The survey showed that the 9pm watershed seems to be working in that 72% of viewers thought that 9pm was “about right”, while 20% thought it was “too early” and 5% “too late”. 84% of parents in 1993 could correctly identify the 9pm watershed, compared to 78% in 1992. Most people (66%) thought that parents should be responsible for children’s viewing; 26% thought it was a shared responsibility between parents and broadcasters; and 7% thought broadcasters were solely responsible.

When questioning cable and satellite viewers, it emerged that they have marked differences in attitude compared with viewers generally. £ to cont.. They are less likely to have been offended by what they see on television, particularly when they are watching the channels for which they are paying. Only 12% of them say they have seen offensive material on one of the satellite movie channels. 79% of cable and satellite viewers (compared with 56% of terrestrial-only viewers) believe that violent and pornographic films should be available for people prepared to pay extra for them.

With regard to programme standards, only 1% found programmes worse on ITV than in 1992. A majority, 53% thought programme standards on ITV and C4 had been maintained, and 12% felt that they had improved on ITV, and 15% on C4. The major complaint regarding programme standards was still “Too many repeats” Cable and satellite channels came out well in quality of programmes, with 49% of satellite viewers and 34% of cable viewers preferring the quality of these services to the four terrestrial channels.