The new measurements of the media was based on a new SES system. SES is the socio-economic status of the people in measurement sample which increase the reliability of the result. System categorises the people as A, B, C1, C2, D and E in the order of level of education (not only a subjects itself, but also their parents he/she grown with) and income level by also considering profession, property, the type of house living in, etc. In order to be more descriptor, the one of these groups some specifications is given below.
Group C2
- More than 4 people live in the house, even they have similar number of children with C2, families who have 3-4 children predominate.
- The goodman and his wife’s education level is elementary school.
- More than a half of the group read newspaper.
- Homeownership rate is same with D and E: 65%, living room’s floor of the household is generally screed, usage of chandelier is less than one-fifth of the group.
- They leave their shoes at the out of the house entrance door.
New SES system changed the definitions of the categories and their distributions in the sampling. The changes of the rates of groups are from 21% to 11% for A and B, from 67% to 53% for C1 and C2, from 12% to 36% for D and E. As it can be seen easily, the new rankings says Turkey has a lower educational and wealth level which is highly questionable. Rather than comparing these with the real distribution of the society in terms of socio-economic status , which is also an important subject to focus, effect of these numbers should be discussed.
These whole effort to understand whose watching what has a particular objective: commercialise audiences. Broadcasters funds are highly lean on the advertisement revenue in Turkey similar to most of the countries. Therefore, productions of them focus on to get high ratings, which means production appeals to lower class of the society in Turkey will get more rankings at the end, even an upper class production is watched as much as the other. This situation leads the whole sector to be a lower class feed for making money day by day.
The other problem these numbers bring is firms that target the A and B segment of people are generally bigger companies produces high quality products. When the society is placed as a mainly lower class, then these companies don't serve their services int he country and don't open their advertisement budgets to broadcasters.
In short, these manipulated numbers blocking broadcasters advertisement chance arising by most of the A&B group targeted organisations, companies and brands and forcing the television sector for serving to uneducated and low income level people to fill their pockets.
I think there's a socio-political aspect to be discussed in here, too. It's not a secret that the reigning political party in Turkey gets most of its votes from C2 and the rest. So it's in a way, TV became a space for its own voters and future possible voters. A production for educated people will not be seen as successful because of the new rating system, so they will not last. Disregarding the audience from the higher segments, indeed reflects the government's policies on the education, they don't really care about it, and it gets worse and worse. There can be no progress in Turkish TV in means of the benefits that TV can serve to a society, without leaving this system. To have a more civilized society, the government should boost the values of the people from highger segments, in my opinion.
ReplyDelete