Televisão, programação e batalha de audiências

: 2019, um ano de viragem

Abstract

The year 2019 marked the history of Portuguese television when SIC, one of the three generalist free to air channels in Portugal (RTP1, SIC e TVI), became the audience leader, a place that had been occupied by TVI since 2005. This moment is not singular and succeeds two other major audience turnarounds in the Portuguese audiovisual sector. The first happened in 1995, when SIC surpassed RTP1 in audience numbers. The second was when TVI transcended SIC as audience leader in 2005.This study aims to respond to the following research question: “What took SIC to the leadership of the market of FTA (free to air) channels in 2019?”. The relevance of this investigation regards the fact that this is a recent event so, little has been written or said to date about this phenomenon, so it is this investigation’s goal to bring light to the understanding of this matter and explore the motives that made SIC the audience leader in 2019.To contextualize this event, the literature review contemplates three areas regarding our research: the history of the Portuguese audiovisual sector, television programming, and audiences. After the literature review, we proceed with methodology which is mixed. Quantitatively, we did a content analysis of the programming grids of the generalist channels RTP1, SIC and TVI, for the years of 1995, 2005, and 2019, since these are the three years that represent the audience leadership turning points in Portuguese television. The programming grids analysis aims to identify eventual programming changes that led SIC to the audience leadership. Qualitatively, we conducted interviews with the diretor of acquisitions and format management of SIC and the programming director of TVI in 2019.The grids analysis and interviews allow us to conclude that in 2019, SIC invested in entertainment, namely talk-shows and reality-shows, in news shows, in national fiction (that composed a big part of the channel’s prime-time) and in hiring well-known personalities. The channel privileged popular content and content spoken in Portuguese (Portugal). At the same time grew in TVI a saturated environment internally and externally, while the channel lacked further investment in its programming grid. The sum of all these factors contributed to the SIC conquest of the audience leadership up to today.

Date of Award	23 Mar 2022
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Catarina Duff Burnay (Supervisor)