Considerations on Performance Management in Television Services

Transcription

1 Considerations on Management in Television Services ELISABETA ANDREEA BUDACIA Faculty of Management Marketing Romanian - American University andreebudacia@yahoo.com MARIAN FLORIN BUSUIOC Faculty of Internal and International Tourism Economy Romanian-American University mf_busuioc@yahoo.com VALERIU GHEORGHE POTECEA Faculty of Internal and International Commercial and Financial - Banking Relations Romanian - American University vpotecea@yahoo.com LUCIAN CONSTANTIN GABRIEL BUDACIA Faculty of Internal and International Commercial and Financial - Banking Relations Romanian - American University lucian.budacia@yahoo.com Abstract: - The article presents a number of issues regarding the management of performance in television services, highlighting the type of performance in this area and all the indicators for assessing performance of TV channels. We have also proposed some qualitative assessment markers of performance in order to have a much clearer picture of needs and desires of the public and to be able to give a dimension of the TV offer. Key-Words: - in the public television service, typology of performance, audience performance, performance markers in the TV field, rating, share, TV audience measurement 1 Introduction The orientation of the contemporary world towards client and the competition for the customer cannot be achieved only through the performance, as all types of resources are capitalized properly and effectively, as the most certain and efficient path to this way. is the starting platform for competitiveness and therefore it should become the basic philosophy of modern organization and its management. The results obtained through an efficient management have as outcome progress, efficiency and effectiveness, satisfaction and prosperity; the fundamental feature of performance, however, is that it usually causes a change for the better. In such approach, it outlines more clearly the complexity of performance, as it has a highly variable behaviour, from the technical and technological, economic, financial, legal, social, performance etc. The notion of performance brings to the foreground the concepts of efficiency and effectiveness, and indicators of their expression are of particular importance in this context; performance involves achieving goals set out in convergence with the ISSN: ISBN:

2 organization s guidelines. Profit has lost its role as the basic indicator of performance of modern organization, losing its position in favour of value, which incorporates for the better a series of very important components, such as cash flow, time, risk and moral, humanitarian, social, cultural, issues etc. However, there are only few authors who tackled the issue of performance in the domain of television services in general and of public services in particular. Although the audiovisual, but especially television, catches the public interest and attracts important human and material resources, the subject of performance in this field has not stirred the interest of many specialists. Taking into account all these aspects, we have to mention that we were firstly interested in making a concept of this matter, the main premise being that of the decrease of TV audience in the context of the competition increase, the decrease of the amounts of money made through advertisement, the increase of the amount of time spent in front of the TV and the tendency to zap through the TV channels. 2 Conceptual Demarcations in Public Service Television is a result obtained particularly in the management, economic, commercial fields and others alike, which features prints of competitiveness, efficiency and effectiveness of the organization, and its structural components and processes. We can conclude by stating that performance in the public television service is a certain level of best results obtained in a specific context, determined especially by: the set of objectives, competition, expense management, work organization, involving and motivating staff, technical characteristics, specificity of the offer and the management team. The targets set in order to achieve the performance standards set in public television should cover a number of issues: to be clear and precise, measurable through indicators, easily obtained in the specific context of broadcasting, realistic and tangible. Competition is an important factor that determines the consequences of the performances of a television, as the market becomes crowded and targeted. How expenditure is handled is a decisive factor when determining the level of performance of public television, as financial resources are set and achieved and goals meet the public s expectations. Organization of work must be performed to determine the performance of the tasks of performing the service, to delimit and dimensional accuracy of the process, to ensure correspondence between the objectives of the process and eliminate a number of inherent failures in conducting any activity. Involving staff in conducting activities to achieve the objectives and requirements arising from the job description of public television have a certain level of performance that relies on quality of the service. The degree of involvement of staff is influenced by political motivation and recognition of merit. Equipment is a technical requirement to achieve performance and special about this coverage as highlevel nationally, resulting in public accessibility to the offer of a public television station. Specific offers are a key to attracting the public to public posts, compared with the commercial offer public television has a number of features derived from its own. The management team is directly involved in achieving performance, but this is public television called on political criteria - according to the laws in force - and the subject - such institution policy. Thus combining the powers with certain political interests could negatively influence the performance of the institution, in particular by drawing some goals - especially editorial - or by committing certain costs. Ion Bucheru, in his work The television phenomenon, does not deal explicitly with the notion of performance of the television services, but he points out the idea that there is a series of elements that determine it, among which we mention: the characteristics of the broadcast message, the functions of the message, the programming of TV shows, the type of TV shows, the adequacy of the information, etc. Ion Stavre, in his work The reconstruction of the Romanian society through the audiovisual, although he does not define the notion of performance in television, he sustains the idea that this notion should be a result of the quality of broadcast programs. We would add to this idea the fact that the respective quality depends on a series of factors, such as: the personnel, the technique, the signal quality and other factors previously mentioned. 3 Typology of of the Public Television Service Regarding the type of performance, we must consider all the factors which contribute to the smooth running of the business of television, but focused and targeted on achieving performance audiences. Since most of the main objectives of television refer to gaining an audience as large - which implicitly draws revenue from broadcasting advertising - both for commercial television, and for the public - we appreciate that all other elements of performance should be targeted to obtain results in terms of TV station audience and ISSN: ISBN:

3 ratings respectively. In this respect, we consider a relevant relational system can be the basis for performance - shown in Figure 1 - which can be considered as a managerial tool in shaping strategies of performance in public television services. Managerial Other Elements Organizational Audience Technical Personnel Related Economic Financial Regarding the performance of the audience, we must have regard to the quantitative dimension - the number of subjects pursuing a TV broadcast and the quality - the impact of the broadcast message. The determination of performance indicators in the field of television is complex. In what concerns public television services, difficulty and complexity intervene just because they are somewhere on the border between competition logics and the social logics, which is necessary to obtain a balance. Competition logics stems from the commercial nature of public television services; for them, the presence of private broadcasters that provide the same services may require the institution's management based on the criterion of cost effectiveness in ensuring an appropriate level of quality of services and legislative requirements. Social logic emerges from the fact that public television services are determined by the public interest, without excluding the efficient economy. Thus, evaluation of performance in public television services is based on the following aspects: correct identification of the needs of the public, determination of objectives and programs related to constant needs, achieving a quality of services closer to citizens' needs and ensure the best return. Information relating to audience is important primarily for television because, on one hand, it can evaluate the performance of such broadcasts, and on the other hand it can draw some strategies on selling advertising space - important source of income. Also, knowledge of audience indicators is of interest for companies wishing to conduct promotional campaigns, as buyers of ad space, advertisers and media companies. Equipment used for marketing research on TV audience measurement has evolved substantially over the last decades. 4 Typology of Indicators by which the Audience of Television Programs Can be Measured TV audience measurement is a matter of general interest to be well managed. Data collection should be made to comply with the rules of professional ethics and provide real data and recognized as such by those concerned. Thus, we list briefly all the indicators by which the audience of television programs can be measured, aiming at the same time, an explanation of their content and importance of knowledge by the TV channels, which aim at enhancing their activities. A first indicator is the total viewing time - total viewing - which is total minutes spent in the front of the TV by viewers in the time interval taken into account; Average Minute Rating (AMR) - represents the average number of viewers per minute, during the period of time taken into account, of a particular television; Television Rating (TVR) - is an indicator similar to the AMR and represents the average number of viewers per minute of all the TV channels tracked during the period of time taken into account; Reach (RCH) - the number of viewers who watched for at least one minute a specific television channel (or all) in the period considered, it is calculated as a percentage compared to total population; Exclusive Reach (ER) - the number of those who, in the range considered, watched for at least one minute a specific television and only that specific one. Average Time Spent (ATS) - is the average time spent by a viewer on a TV channel (or all). There ISSN: ISBN:

4 are taken into account only those who watched at least one minute in the range considered. Average Time Viewed (ATV) - represents the average number of minutes spent on a particular TV channel within the total period of time by persons from the target group considered (the universe of research). Share (SHR) - is part of the total viewing time (Total Viewing) corresponding to each television. Adhesion (ADH) - is the audience share of the target group examined in total TV audience. "Total audience" is represented by a group of reference (ADH indicator value is always expressed in percentage). ADH = AMR analyzed target / AMR reference target x 100 Affinity (AFF) - is a ratio between the audience of the analyzed target group and the audience of a reference group. AFF = AMR% analyzed target / AMR% reference target x 100 Emission Share (ESH) - the duration of an event (television program) related to the total emission of a television that broadcast the program. The indicator is calculated as follows: ESH = Duration of event/ Duration of channel emission for a whole day Reception Share (RSH) - is the rating of an event compared with the total rating of the respective television channel for a whole day; it can be expressed as the number of viewers a program brings in a day compared with the total number of viewers the TV channels has in a day of broadcasting. It is calculated by: RSH = AMR event x Event duration / AMR TV channel for a whole day x TV Channel emission for a whole day ALFA (ALFA idx) is the ratio between Reception Share and Emission Share, calculated for a broadcast program. ALFA is a marker; when its value exceeds 100, the respective channel has obtained a higher rating than the audience average of the respective TV channel for the respective day. ALFA = RSH / ESH BETA (BETA idx) - is the ratio between RSH calculated for a TV channel (the importance of the program for the TV channel in question) and RSH calculated for all television channels (the importance of the program in broadcast). The BETA Index expresses what the program obtains for its television compared to what other programs achieve for their TV channels. The formula is as follows: BETA = RSH / Total RSH Emission Share Typology (EST) represents the weight in term of duration of a program within the whole duration of programs of same kind. It is calculated as follows: EST = program duration / duration of programs of same kind The diversity of mentioned indicators allows an assessment of the relevant TV programs; the most used are rating and share. These indicators are also mentioned by Nicolae Stanciu and Petre Varlam, in the work The television management, which recommends that they should be used equally by private TV channels, but also by commercial TV channels, especially regarding decisions that are made concerning the modification of the programs structure. Our research shows that the level of these indicators is the main element depending on which a television s top management sets the broadcast coming out of programs, broadcast time, staff salaries. Regarding this last aspect, we should point out that to motivate presenters and producers, some TV channels pay them according to the publicity attracted by the show. Also we note that these indicators primarily capture quantitative elements, neglecting the fact that watching TV has as motivation, on the one hand, leisure time, and on the other hand, a number of needs for information, cultural and even education needs. Thus, issues such as the degree of information enrichment or public knowledge, educating the audience or satisfaction or dissatisfaction felt after watching are not caught by the presented indicators and used by TV channels. Thus we propose a series of qualitative indicators for assessing performance in television audience, indicating that they should be concerned by all the TV channels, but especially by public channels which have a special status in the broadcasting market. Technical indicators mainly concern the quality of the received message and the effective number of the subscribers. Specific quality indicators: the quality of broadcast shows, public information degree, need and usefulness of information and messages transmitted; improvement of audience knowledge level; audience awareness regarding the current problems of the Romanian and European societies, but with the entire evolution on international and global levels. Audience serving indicators: ~ Professional training of presenters; ~ Efficiency of organization s managers; their capacity to achieve established objectives; ~ Economic and managerial efficiency of the organization; the value of the resources entailing the ISSN: ISBN:

5 outcomes achievement and the quality of management decisions; ~ Offer accessibility: program hours, available time range, and waiting period for a certain program. Aforementioned performance indicators demonstrate that there are sufficient forms of determining the extent to which offered public services meet social needs of public interest, while they allow determining the contribution of each employee, manager and executor of a public institution in rendering offered services. The system of performance indicators represents, at the same time, a concrete and objective basis for motivating differentially human resources within service organizations depending on the degree of achievement of set targets and levels of achieved performance. 5 Conclusion In recent years specialists talk increasingly about performance in general and especially in the television field. Management concepts that dominate modern televisions are value and performance, to measure performance is to assess the value and the known causes of the value "translate as" performance. In this sense performance requires a global vision of interdependency parameters of internal and external, quantitative and qualitative techniques and human, physical and financial indicators of management. An important role is assigned to processes involved in the value creation mechanism, along with production and consumption, and a number of processes in the natural environment and society are critical, because performance is not only within the enterprise or beyond. After tests and studies we have found that performance on television is made in particular by means of quantitative indicators - relevant to the television market - but, in our view, insufficient. This failure is supported, at least two arguments: first specific public service television imposing new elements of performance evaluation, on the other hand, the impact of messages sent is not rated. In order to correct these shortcomings, we proposed the assessment of performance and audience through qualitative techniques, "serving" and the specific quality. A problem in this regard is the determination of these indicators which can be achieved through the satisfaction scale. Important to note is that it combines qualitative research with quantitative and link them, for example a number of television programs depends on the quality message and broadcast reception, timeliness and relevance of the message, preparing "provider", etc. offer accessibility. Ensemble indicators for assessing performance in equal measure to compare TV merged with other competitors, but also a basis to assess the reasons and human resources. Besides what has been mentioned before, this work points out a series of aspects, but especially proposes some concepts specific for the field of television; in this context, the paper has a series of advantages, because it firstly presents a definition of performance in the field of television services, it points out the factors which determine it, it presents a typology of performances in this field, but it especially presents the importance of audience performances, regarded as main objective of a TV channel and proposes several qualitative indicators of performance evaluation. References: [1] N. Albu, C. Albu, Instrumente de management al performanńei, vol. II, Ed. Economică, Bucureşti, 2003 [2] I. Bucheru, Fenomenul televiziune, Editura FundaŃiei România de Mâine, Bucureşti, 2004 [3] E. Burduş, Gh. Căprărescu, A. Androniceanu, M. Miles, Managementul schimbării organizańionale, edińia a doua, E. Economică, Bucureşti, 2003 [4] I. Cătoiu (coordinator), Cercetări de marketing, Editura Uranus, Bucureşti, 2002 [5] D. Ciocîrlan, Sisteme şi tehnici manageriale, Ed. Universitară, Bucureşti, 2007 [6] A. Dubrin, Essentials of Manangement (7th edition); Ed. Thomson; South Western, 2006 [7] K. Idris, Proprietatea Intelectuală un instrument puternic pentru dezvoltarea economică, OrganizaŃia Mondială a ProprietăŃii Intelectuale, Editura OSIM, Bucureşti, 2006 [8] R. N. Lussier, Management Fundamentals; Ed. Thomson; South Western, 2006 [9] O. Nicolescu, Managementul organizańiei, Ed. Economică, Bucureşti, 2007 [10] O. Nicolescu, (coordinator), Sisteme, metode şi tehnici manageriale ale organizańiei, Editura Economică, Bucureşti, 2000 [11] O. Nicolescu, I. Plumb, M. Pricop, I. Vasilescu, I. Verboncu (coordinators), Abordări moderne în managementul şi economia organizańiei, Vol. 1 Managementul general al organizańiei, Editura Economică, Bucureşti, 2003 [12] D. Noyé, Manager les performances, INSEP CONSULTING Edition, Paris, 2002 ISSN: ISBN:

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