MDA looks to measure national media consumption

The Media Development Authority (MDA) is looking to gather national data on media consumption across all content platforms.MDA will be working with local broadcasters to put together national data on local media consumption across free-to-air (FTA) TV, cable TV, IPTV, online and mobile platforms.It is hoping that the data will help it to understand how its programmes fare and create better content across TV and other platforms. In the long run, it is hoping to reel in local audiences with better tailored content.“Efforts to build strong local content that can engage Singaporeans can no longer rely on traditional TV alone, and there is a need for a national database which effectively captures media consumption across all media platforms via which Singaporeans access TV content, including online and mobile,” MDA said in a statement.Creating strong local content for the Singapore market has been a topic of focus for many local broadcasters.The MDA cited how local broadcasters MediaCorp, StarHub and SingTel have all in recent years successfully launched their second screen offering (namely Toggle, TV Anywhere and Mio TV Play) and expanded their content offerings beyond traditional platforms.A trial will begin in 2015. According to the MDA’s site, a tender will be called by the third quarter of 2014 for research firms that can provide audience measurement for the task.Results will be announced in fourth quarter 2014 and the data is expected to be ready for use by January 2016.According to the Media Consumer Experience Study 2013, over the past two years from 2011 to 2013, Singaporeans have been consuming more content on TV, online and mobile platforms. Media consumption has grown by almost seven hours per week. This is from 22.8 hours to 29.4 hours.In particular, the hours spent accessing media-related websites on the Internet almost doubled from 6.8 hours per week in 2011 to 12.9 hours per week in 2013.