It’s like every other week, we get a whole new fuss about ratings on certain shows. MTV is particularly obsessed with ratings, making time on their nightly news bulletins to announce their alleged leadership in whatever category they choose. Remember the whole “s-word” debacle for their Dancing with the Stars vs Take Me Out thing?

Why MTV Hates Real Ratings

It’s no secret that the ratings ad buyers count on are something MTV isn’t particularly fond of, given that LBCI and Al Jadeed consistently rate better on it. Attempts to rock that boat in the past failed though, and even with auditors double-checking, the current IPSOS standard was adopted again by all major TV stations in Lebanon when it comes to pricing their ad slots.

MTV sometimes announces it is the “first”, but upon further inspection, they admit that these rankings are made by them, usually by walking around with a camera and MTV microphone asking passerby what their favorite TV station is at the moment.

Now, you don’t need me to explain how unscientific that is. Remember when we used to call up a radio station to enter a contest, and the presenter would ask “what’s your favorite station”, people obviously tended to say whatever station their voice was being heard on. I’m not sure a handful of people on the street’s answer with an MTV crew asking them is actually a standard to be trusted…

The Perfect, Bizarre Experiment

Anyway, in a cruel twist of fate, LBCI and MTV are airing the same show, in the same time slot, on the same day. It’s like the absolute best control experiment, where MTV can’t argue that the quality (or “high moral standards”) of their content is actually superior, regardless of the ratings.

I got my hands on the actual ratings for the two first episodes of “Alakat Khassa”, on July 3 and July 4 of 2017.

Here’s the %SHR (SHR% — Share — Proportion of individuals viewing a specific programme or daypart compared to the total number of individuals watching TV during the same time interval.)

On July 3, 19.6% of people watching TV were on LBCI, versus 8.0% on MTV. This means over 70% of total people watching this show, at the same time, were on LBCI, versus less than 30% on MTV.

On July 4, 56% of people were watching the show on LBC, versus 44% watching it on MTV.

Now, it’s just the first two shows, but the controversy that two stations are airing the same show at the same hour, had generated enough buzz that people were aware of this, and more people chose to watch it on LBCI over MTV.

One thing to note, is that air time on July 3rd was almost exactly the same. However, on July 4, MTV aired 36 minutes more. This means that the %SHR of July 4 for MTV was definitely gonna go higher than the day before, given more than 30 minutes extra, where folks might switch after the airing stopped on LBC.

By Territory

One interesting part was also how viewership of the two stations differs a lot from region to region in Lebanon. Overall, during the time of the show airing, LBCI had 17.3% of all TV viewers, and MTV had 10.2%. In Mount Lebanon, LBCI’s share was almost double MTV’s (22.3% vs 11.6%). In the Bekaa, MTV’s share was less than 2% of the total, with LBC having almost 12%.

If anything, this shows that LBCI’s audience is much more diverse and spread out across Lebanon, and that MTV falls behind in all territories and is severely lacking in places like the Bekaa and Mount Lebanon.

Why I Do This

I like keeping people honest, first. Second, what MTV stands for threatens the way of life of many people like us. To me, MTV is the kind of station that has a constant, malicious target on the youth’s back, attacking social justice issues in a conservative, patriarchal, intolerant way we hoped would go away by now.

They’re the kind of station that spends more than 6 minutes of their news defending a plastic surgeon under investigation for allegedly trying to cover up the circumstances of a patient’s death, by bashing those asking questions to try and keep the investigation honest, in a country known for botched and biased investigations…

The kind of station that frames refugees as the source of every single woe in Lebanon. The kind of station that leads witch hunts that land people in jail for a status or tweet, or being gay, or being from a minority group.

It’s natural that I don’t want this station making unsubstantiated claims about their supremacy, which in turn means more ad revenue. I prefer that money goes to a station with views that are closer to ours, who despite catering to the weird fetishes of Lebanese audiences like fortune-telling and stuff, would never call for blood after a homicide case, or fabricate stories about satanic worship and “digital drugs” to pander to their ultra-conservative base.

What I love most about these ratings though, is that they show the majority of Lebanese TV audiences aren’t the self-obsessed, intolerant type. That despite all the self-patting on the back by MTV, LBCI is still the most watched. This hopefully means less people listen to intolerant rhetoric every night around 8PM, and that means there is still hope for this country!

Full disclosure: I’ve never seen the show, and don’t even know what it’s about. Just using the numbers to draw conclusions.