This web section contains exclusive reports based on Broadcast Audience Survey (BAS) 2006-2007 conducted by Equal Access Nepal. You'll also find other published reports by various media organizations on the field of radio and television broadcasting sector of Nepal. Some of these reports are available for download as PDF files.

1. Background

2. Outline

3. Survey Indicators

4. Methodology

1. Background

The Nepal Broadcast Audience Survey (BAS) was conceived in 2004 as a result of the dramatic growth of the reach and variety of radio available in Nepal and its increasing availability to rural audiences as a means of receiving vital access to information and education. As commercial, government and development based investments in the radio sector continue to grow, this survey presents a timely analysis of what has been achieve to date in terms of geographic and audience reach and offers the opportunity to improve planning and effectiveness in the future.

To date, little work had been done to determine a comprehensive national radio listening or radio reach data. The first nationwide survey was done by New Era, a consulting firm in 1974. Another survey in 1989 was done by Research Inputs Development Associates. The 1997 radio survey conducted by Radio Nepal has been considered as the most comprehensive radio survey done before BAS. However, this survey was focused towards the radio ownership and popularity of the programs of Radio Nepal. It was also conducted during the time when there was only one FM radio being run by Radio Nepal –at 100 MHz at Kathmandu. Some surveys on radio broadcasting were also commissioned by, Panos South Asia (2002), MS Nepal (2004) and other smaller surveys by the radio station themselves. Most of these surveys are more qualitative and cover a smaller sample size of the population.

Broadcast Audience Survey (BAS) was envisioned of by a large group of Equal Access’ staff and external partners including, Balendra Thakuri, Upendra Aryal, David Brooks, Sameer Shukla, Deepal Bikram Thapa, Krishna Guragain, Sue Aitken, Nirmal Rijal and Ram Sharan Kharki. This report was authored by Pawan Prakash Upreti and Michael Bosse who implemented the project in partnership with Radio Nepal, Audio Visual Systems Pvt. Limited, AC Nielsen Nepal and Comm Systems Pty Ltd. Special thanks are owed to Radio Nepal for the extended field use of their field signal strength instruments, Audio Visual Systems for their sustained field work, Pawan Prakash Upreti who acquired the needed technical skills for the radio mapping exercise to succeed and to all the radio stations that contributed their time and information.
 

Funding for the BAS was provided by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, USAID, UNICEF and Equal Access. Similar surveys conducted by Altai Consulting in Afghanistan, UNICEF in Cambodia, Comm Systems in Laos and UNESCO in Mozambique were reviewed as inputs into the BAS.

By necessity, much of the 4,000 respondent-survey focused on topics of particular interest to Equal Access (in line with the programs from which we derived funding support for the activity). However, where possible we attempted to generate generic data that would be useful to the entire radio sector. In the future we would like to repeat this survey on an annual basis and broaden the design to include elements to benefit other development, government and commercial partners.

BAS was initiated on September 2005 and accomplished by April 2007. The audience survey took around 20 months where the difficult political situation of the country delayed the completion time by more than 8 months. The survey was conducted in on two phases, first on June-July 2006 and second on February-March 2007. Both of the surveys were similar in pattern with minor changes done to analyze the trends and behavior changes in the media and listenership patterns.
 

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