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Exposure and Acceptance of RTM Governmental Information Programme among Urban Young Viewers in the Klang Valley
Mahathir Ahamad1*, Norasikin Alimom1
1 Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, UiTM, Shah Alam, Malaysia
*Corresponding Author: [email protected]
Accepted: 15 October 2020 | Published: 15 November 2020
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Abstract: Television plays an important role, especially in disseminating information and also to enhance the mass communication process. As Malaysia viewers were known to have various kinds of preferable television programs and content, each existing TV station might use their core programme that gives advantages to them in shaping viewers mind and behaviour. This research is conducted to measure the level of exposure and acceptance among young urban viewers in the Klang valley towards RTM governmental information programmes, a programme that is designed to share information on government’s campaign agenda and a little bit of political concerns. A quantitative approach has been used where 100 samples from IPTA and IPTS has answered a questionnaire and all the data has been analysed using SPSS. The study found out that the level of exposure and acceptance among the sample was at a low level, due to certain factors, include unattractive programme style and concept and the tendencies of watching more entertainment programme, rather than talk show or factual programme, besides, the challenges from the internet that give various alternatives and easy access for the young viewers to select want they want to watch.
Keywords: mass communication, young urban, governmental, entertainment
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1. Introduction
Previously, public dependency towards tools such as television and radio were undeniable.
These tools are considered as the most effective tools that are known to enhance communications processes, especially in mass communications and press agent / publicity or public information communication. As early as 1950, the public has been familiarized with television at large and the growth of this media has already shaped and portrayed several aspects of their life including social activities, behaviour, opinion making/decision making and the policy making. Ray (1992), explained that:
“The popular mass entertainment media, first in the form of film and today led by television, have thus become a significant social factor, conveying thematic messages and lessons about whom to emulate and fear in society, what the basic causes of crime are and how crime should be fought. However, society’s ability to discern between fact and fiction is often blurred, resulting in inaccurate perceptions of whom to fear, the basic causes of crime, and the appropriate responses.”
At present, even though the tools are still in use, the television function has been overtaken by one virtual tool that is far more effective, fast, accessible, portable and advanced, which is the internet or the world-wide-web. This state-of-the-art invention has become popular since
77 the usage of computers which is widely accepted by the millennium generation who thirst for innovations and the modern lifestyle. On top of that, people are competing with each other to be the first to be well equipped with the latest information and up to date news. Thus, a new form of social pressure among the new generation emerges. The first one who acquires the news will have high status but instead of getting compliments for disseminating latest and reliable information, this Y and Z generation are more eager to win more “likes” or “tweets”
and also either followers, friends or subscribers. On the negative side, sometimes they tend to be unethical, providing false alarm information, sharing fake quotes, distorted religious verses, and so on which could trigger miscommunication and spark confrontation between cyber users.
Until now, the agencies such as Jabatan Penyiaran Malaysia or popularly called Radio Television Malaysia (RTM) has taken full responsibility in ensuring that all the agenda and government objectives are delivered to the public. However, at present with the various implementation of new technologies and new media such as social media and high-tech applications, the prejudice that RTM is viewed as a bias information source and pro-authority and coupled with the unstable socio-political scenarios which lately have generated a lot of silent majority of anti-government society, it has become a huge challenge to RTM in maintaining its charisma and reputation as the pioneer in local media industry. Alarmingly the volume of viewers among the teenagers and young adults seem to be slowly diminishing.
Therefore, the question arises, is RTM still relevant to the generations Y and Z? If not, then what are the causes? Is it due to its content or is it because of the limitation in producing attractive material or are the pro-government based programmes that are pushing the young audience away? Thus, this current issue led me to study the relevancies of RTM governmental information programmes (GIP) among young viewers, in particular the urban university students studying in Klang Valley. The objectives of the study are to find out the relationship between the exposure and the acceptance of RTM governmental information programmes towards young viewers.
2. Literature Review
Media Exposure
It’s undeniable that every modern medium of communication does have some unwanted impact, so does television. Asiah (1991) emphasized that television provides various functions in enhancing communication processes, especially at the macro level and it really has a significant impact towards the audiences. This statement is being supported by a study conducted by Pecora, Murray and Wartella, (2006) that focus on the impact of television on children’s social development. The result of the study showed some positive reactions between subject’s negative social development and their watching television habits. The major premise of this study is that children that are highly exposed to violence programs on television have the highest tendency of performing or executing violence related activities when they become adolescence. This comes to a conclusion that television has the impact in persuading its subject or target audience depending on the viewing consumption and the content.
Governmental / Political Information Programme
Various programmes such as the morning shows like Selamat Pagi Malaysia, documentary shows like Galeri Nasional and Lensa Siswa, talk shows such as Dialog, Suara Kita Hak Kita, Vasantham, What Say You and Landskap was known for its content that delivered the
78 national agenda and dedicated to all kinds of audience in Malaysia. According to the Deputy Director, RTM Current Affairs Section, Mrs. Rabieyah Binti Jamaludin, this kind of programme was dedicated to serve current and important national issues towards the public, while at the same time accommodate the platform for particular government agencies or ministry in educating the public regarding certain policies and development plans. Programs like Suara Kita Hak Kita for example were meant to educate the public about consumerism and entrepreneurship and expose them about the government plan and facilities that they have prepared.
While other programs such as Dialog and Landskap also listed as the core programme and decided by RTM management as governmental information programme since they started the campaign in General Election 2013.
Findings
To answer the first research question, the data showed that the amount of exposure to RTM governmental information programmes is low and significantly, it would highly affect the next research questions. A few reasons can determine the low level of exposure among the respondents. One of them is that the concept of the programme was not attractive enough to the young viewers. The monotonous flow of the programme, plus a very old fashion set and dull lighting might be the main reason why young viewers avoid to watch the programme.
However, looking at the most watched programme, Selamat Pagi Malaysia, this long running programme in TV1 has a simple touch and manages to attract young viewers by having a young and energetic host, while preparing several slots to expose teenage activities.
Compared to programmes like Dialog and Landskap, which has been named by RTM as their core programme in particular, these two programmes highlight the current issues that focus more on political agenda. Thus, if they tend to get attention and participation from the young viewers, they need to do something in terms of the concept and the style as in the survey done, the highest television programme that has been chosen by the young viewers was the entertainment programme. Sood (1999 & 2002) explained that the concept of edutainment could be applied in order to shape human behaviour and in large scale, it could contribute to change the mind setting, value system and behaviour of particular societies. Thus, the producer of these programmes might implement some of the edutainment ideas in order to attract more young viewers.
Most probably, the acceptance of RTM governmental information programmes has been affected from the result of the television programme exposure level. By logic, the less respondents being exposed to certain programmes, the low level of acceptance of that particular programme content. Looking at the result, all three main programmes (Dialog, Landskap and Suara Kita Hak Kita) showed average between 2.79 to 2.83. This means that either they are not sure of what is the main content or message in the programme or they definitely could not accept the concept or the content framed by the programme. Again, this might be derived from the fact that most of the young viewers nowadays tend to watch more entertainment news, rather than to watch factual or news style programmes. Thus, the amount of acceptance towards RTM governmental information programmes is at a low level.
The impact of this result might affect the idea of injecting propaganda doctrine among teenagers and it seems failed to educate and encourage young in terms of disseminating national agenda and shape their political views. Through the data recorded, the main difference that can be seen is through the programme Selamat Pagi Malaysia, which showed
79 a slight difference in the mean value between male (1.90) and female (2.47), while the rest does not show any significant results. So, we can say that there is a difference in the amount of exposure to the RTM governmental information programme among the young viewers between the males and females but in a small amount of differences. This might have happened as the respondents showed more numbers of female participants and it does affect the result.
Looking at the other demographic variables, which is levels of education, most of respondents who still in their diploma studies showed high amount of exposure toward Selamat Pagi Malaysia with mean value of 2.64, compared to those who studied in degree level (2.07). This result might also be derived from the high number of diploma students respondents (63 respondents) compared to degree level participants (37 respondents).
The data in the findings showed that the level of acceptance towards the selected programme was significant to Dialog programme and the differences show higher acceptance level towards female respondents with mean value of 14.61. Again, this might be derived from the higher amount of female participants (68 respondents).
Looking at the levels of education, the data showed a similar pattern in three selected programmes where obviously, there are significant differences between diploma students’
respondents and degree students respondents. It showed the higher amount in mean value that represents degree students’ respondents for each selected programme (Landskap = 15.75, Dialog = 15.62 & Suara Kita Hak Kita = 15.70). Even though their exposure level is a bit low, the acceptance might become high as they might be aware of the programme existence and understand more about the content of the programme.
Overall, the results showed that the relationship between these two variables was at low level in average, which the correlation value shown is .496 for Landskap, a poor level at .278 for Dialog and moderate level for .428 for Suara Kita Hak Kita. That means there is a significant relationship between the exposure to the RTM governmental information programme and the acceptance to the RTM governmental information programme among the young viewers can be considered accurate but in the low level of positive significant amount.
3. Discussion and Conclusion
Several factors might contribute to this problem including a less attractive programme for teenage target audience, same and stagnant programme concept, dull set and unattractive host, same issues that always highlight political concern and some other factors.
Thus, if the level of exposure is low, it is hard for the government, RTM as their main communicating tool to the public to provide and to communicate with the youngsters, in the move of the government to gain young voters support. The failure of attracting young viewers seems like failing in their strategies in gaining votes for the upcoming general elections. This can be shown where, even though some of the respondents might have watched some of RTM programmes and are aware about the programme existence, yet they still feel that the information was not clear enough to be perceived and the content of the designated programme does not succeed to persuade or encourage them to be more responsible citizens.
The exposure and acceptance level of the show the most significant sign was Selamat Pagi Malaysia, a morning show that might have a little bit of fresh concept and style. This long
80 running programme has gone through several transitions according to the theme and trend changes, including injecting elements of modern and relaxed concepts. They also provided a few slots that allowed involvement from young participants such as teenagers and students to perform and promote their activities, which is why most of the respondents are aware of this programme.
Based on the findings and conclusion, a few suggestions could be in order to strengthen the research and also to help RTM in improving and gather more young viewers to watch RTM more. As for young viewers, they prefer more entertainment forms of programmes and tend to dislike factual and straight forward programmes like talk shows and news/documentary.
The concept of edutainment could be practiced as the young viewers might get bored easily for having full factual presentation in a certain television show. In the future, RTM might want to think of having the new concepts for their talk show, which have it in open space and invite more youngsters to voice out their opinion. This could be done while having a road tour for a designated programme, while alternately providing space for the young audience to present or to perform their talent, creatively or academically.
Future researchers could conduct more in-depth and specific tests and surveys in searching what would be the best and the most attractive style and concept of television programme by having a small group interviews, or going for a nationwide survey. This would also help other researchers in understanding different kinds of young viewer categories and their preferred programme. RTM should work hand in hand with researcher and other related government or private agencies such as Ministry of Higher Learning, PEMANDU, IPTA and IPTS in discussing and producing more interactive and attractive programme that not only entertain the young viewer, but manage to shape their mind and behaviour to become first class mind generation towards 2050.
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