A newly-launched local TV station run by a regional publishing group has claimed 96,000 viewers in its first month.
Mustard TV, owned by Norwich-based newspaper and magazine publisher Archant, began broadcasting on Freeview channel 8 in March.
It has now published audience figures for its first month of operation which show that a fifth of all adults in the broadcast area had tuned in – equivalent to 96,000 viewers.
Of these, 58,000 had watched its Mustard News bulletin, 30,000 had watched the Archive Half Hour show, and 21,000 watched the Mustard Show, the station’s weekday magazine programme.
The production desk at Mustard TV
The research, based on interviews carried out between April 30 and May 11, showed that viewers had tuned in for an average of 29 minutes, while 16-24 year olds had spent 33 minutes when they last watched.
However, with the research only looking at the viewing habits of one person per household, the station believes that the total number of viewers could be even higher.
Fiona Ryder, Mustard TV managing director, said: “We are delighted to see that so many people have retuned their TVs and are watching Mustard TV. It is a really encouraging set of initial figures which puts us well and truly in the heart of the local media map. ”
Mel Wilcockson, Mustard’s head of commercial added: “We are really impressed with the number of businesses that invested in our product from launch and the volume of customers that have rebooked.”
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“It has now published audience figures for its first month of operation which show that a fifth of all adults in the broadcast area had tuned in – equivalent to 96,000 viewers.”
Really? The population of the city of Norwich is about 125,000, twice that if you add on the surrounding suburbs. The numbers don’t add up. The Mustard licence is for Norwich, not the whole of Norfolk (pop: 850,000) which includes far-away King’s Lynn etc.
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Indeed – figures can be terribly misleading. Mustard can’t be viewed as a TV station outside Norwich City and its immediate environs and the figures published would seem to suggest the area has a population of almost five times as much as the reality. With a total county population of a lot less than a million then how 20% of just the city can equal 96,000 is beyond me.
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Archant has form when it comes to wildly exaggerating the popularity of its products.
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Pity the TV show has to be run by the same company that has a newspaper monopoly in East Anglia. Where’s the democracy, freedom of choice etc in that?
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Isn’t this the equivalent of 3k viewers a day? Hardly going to bring the national grid crashing down is it?
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