AUDIENCE PERCEPTION OF WOMEN DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES, ON PLATEAU RADIO TELEVISION (PRTV) JOS

ABSTRACT

The study conducted in Plateau State set out to find out the perception of the residents in the selected study areas of Jos North, Jos South and Bassa Local Government Areas o n the role of the programmes, Women in Action and Muryar Mata in creating demand for development and providing relevant information to promote the development of women as designed by the Plateau Radio and Television Corporation (PRTVC). The programmes are being transmitted for more than a decade to address women developmental issues. The study seeks to find out the level of awareness of the programmes, examine opinions of the respondents on the relevance of the programme in meeting the information needs of women to facilitate and promote their self development and find out the strengths and weaknesses of these programmes. The study adopts the Selective Perception Model and Diffusion of Innovation theory and uses survey research method and multi stage as its sampling technique. A total of 492 copies of the questionnaire were administered in the study areas in Plateau State. Findings from the study reveal that 95.5 per cent of the male respondents are aware of the programme Women in Action, while 100 per cent of the female respondents are aware of the programme Muryar Mata. Generally, findings reveal that factors which affect level of awareness of these programmes are the broadcast language, access to its channel of transmission, issues discussed, its clarity, time schedule and duration of the programmes. The programmes were rated by respondents as relevant in meeting the information needs for women to promote their development through the aforementioned factors. Findings show that the weaknesses of the programmes are audience low appeal in viewership, lack of confidence on the relevance of its guests’ expertise in handling questions, the strengths of the programmes are its content, broadcast language, clarity, access to channels of its transmission and its time schedules. The Study recommends re-invention of these programmes through constant improvement to increase its capacity to satisfy the needs of different segment of its audience, this entails providing more quality information on health, education and economic empowerment for women development, more duration and frequency for the programmes, use of indigenous languages and more interaction with the audience by including a phone in segment.