NEWS | Wednesday, 06 February 2008

BA statistics are wrong – Melita Cable

David Darmanin

The Broadcasting Authority (BA) recently published an Audience Assessment announcing an increase of 23.6% in Digital Aerial and Cable subscriptions.
Recording a 17.9% slump in Melita Cable’s analogue subscriptions, the report gave every reason to believe that there was a severe migration from analogue cable to digital TV usage. The BA, however, raised eye brows for failing to publish who out of the two digital TV operators, Melita Cable and Go, has the biggest slice of the pie.
“God forbid if we had to give weight to this survey,” Melita Sales and Marketing Manager Franco Degabriele told this newspaper. “We have our own database, and the numbers don’t tally. We can’t make heads or tails of these statistics. If we had to take the BA’s findings seriously, it would turn out that Go’s number of subscribers is insignificant. There has been considerable migration to digital cable – that cannot be denied. The shift however is exaggerated in the BA’s report - it’s simply impossible. Also, I can’t understand why there is no specification on what percentage of Digital TV subscribers use our services and how many others use Go’s.” On his part, BA’s Head of Communications Mario Axiaq explained : “If we had to feature how many are Melita subscribers and how many others make use of Multiplus, we would end up subdividing numbers to an extent that our margins of error would be increased. There has been a significant take-up in digital TV subscriptions, and MITTS can confirm that.”
When asked if their numbers tally with MITTS’ database, Axiaq said : “Our numbers can never tally with MITTS, Go or Melita’s. We have taken household samples, whereas the other data available also covers commercial users. According to their records, a 300-bedded hotel will be counted in according to the number of television sets enabled to use the service, be it digital or analogue, irrespective of the fact that there is only one subscription.”
Go’s Chief Commercial Officer Keith Fearne was not available for comment, even though several attempts were made to reach him on his mobile phone.

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