There is no doubt that NTV is the biggest TV station in Uganda but the 2nd position is contentious with many claimants but polls claim otherwise that Bukedde TV 1 and NBS come second and third respectively.
The polls in question come from Geopoll that recently released a 13 month survey from January 2017 to January 2018 about viewership habits of Ugandan TV in the peak hours (call it primetime), when majority of Ugandans are glued to their TVs. The time in question runs from 6PM – 10PM and is an account of average television audiences per 30 minutes. So those concurrent 30 minutes that add up to make the 5 hours between 6PM – 10M have been factored in, reports the CEO Magazine.
The report covered 10 specific TV stations while others are categorised like the word itself as “others.”These Included NTV, NBS, Bukedde TV1, BBS Terefayina, ABS TV, Spark TV, Delta, Magic TV, Star TV, Kwese Free Sports, salt TV among others.
According to the same magazine, NTV had 886,000 viewers as of January 2018 against 1,482,000 in January 2017, Bukedde TV1 had 580,000 viewers as of January 2018 against 777,000 viewers in January 2017 and NBS TV had 466,000 viewers as of January 2018 against 513,000 in the same period last year.
This represents a 40% decline in NTV viewership, a 25% decline in Bukedde TV viewership and a 9% decline in NBS TV viewership.
These seem to be doing better
On the contrary, TV stations categorised as others increased their viewership by 197%. These are BBS Terefayina, ABS TV, Delta, Magic TV, Star TV, Kwese Free Sports and Salt TV. These had a combined viewership of 928,000 in January 2018 against 312,000 viewers in the same period last year.
More good news is that Spark TV has been crowned with the fastest growing TV station in Uganda title in the same period. As of January 2018, it had 240,000 viewers against just 10,000 viewers in January 2017, representing a 2,300% increase in viewership. The spike in viewership is attributed to a series of programming that includes soaps, music, news among others.
