Channel Swazi television has come out tops in a poll among university students.
They say that it is the best and most reliable television station in Swaziland (but there are only two) and ‘is on the verge of reaching international standards in terms of news reporting and broadcasting’.
The research, conducted by Journalism and Mass Communication (JMC) students at the University of Swaziland (UNISWA), discovered that students preferred watching Channel Swazi rather than the state-owned Swazi TV because of the variety of programmes offered.
They preferred entertaining programmes such as movies, talk shows, comedy and soaps. Fewer than half questioned put news high on their list of favourites, but they did say that they believed that Channel Swazi ‘deserves the acknowledgement for being unbiased when reporting’.
They believed that Channel Swazi offered a ‘wide range of home brewed programmes that relate to the way of life of the Swazi nation’.
Most students believed that privately owed companies (such as Channel Swazi) offered better services than government owned ones.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, most students were in favour of the television station employing young people ‘to keep the station lively’.
Writing about Swazi TV, the researchers concluded that it ‘still has a lot of work to do to improve its viewership. Swazi TV still has to bring about changes there and also try to involve Swazi society by broadcasting home brewed programmes.’
The research was conducted as part of the JMC Diploma Year Two mass communication research course and the researchers were Ayanda Ntuli, Thobile Maziya, Futhi Mkhonta and Tsandziwe Dlamini.
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