 Source: BBC Monitoring Media - July 14, 2005: According to a report on the TunisOnline website at www.tunisiaonline.com, Noureddine Boutar, the general director of Radio Mosaique, Tunisia's first private radio station, has announced that the station will expand its coverage in the country. The station will also offer a live audio stream on the internet, said tunisiaonline.com.
The station, which launched in November 2003 and currently broadcasts to the greater Tunis metropolitan area, will cover the Northeast and Northwest of the country in future.
The report also stated that a second private radio station, Radio El Jawhara, should start broadcasting soon from Tunisia's third- largest city, Sousse, and will cover the country's west-central region.
Mosaic highly rated in survey
Radio Mosaique enjoys great popularity in Tunis at present, according to a report on the onparle.detunisie.com website, quoting an audience survey by market-research company SIGMA, carried out in May 2005. The survey revealed that Radio Mosaique had around 1.3m listeners daily, with a 59.4 per cent audience share and an average listening time of two hours, 36 minutes.
This contrasts with the performance of Tunisia's public broadcasters. Chaine Nationale attracted 12.8 per cent of the listening audience daily, equivalent to about 288,000 listeners. Radio Tunis Chaine Internationale had an audience share of 7.2 per cent, or 162,000 daily listeners. Radio Jeune (Youth Radio), the radio station most affected by the launching of the mostly-music Radio Mosaique had a daily audience of 4.1 per cent, less than 100,000 listeners daily, said onparle.detunisie.com.
Radio and TV in Tunisia was opened up to private operators following a decision by Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2004.
|
