The top ten TV ratings for the three months of 2021, summarized by the Television and Radio Commission (TRC), are the subject of some interesting observations.

News releases have their own logic as a separate information unit. Looking at them, the viewer should form a more or less complete picture of the events of the day.

This is probably the only goal, as individual reports and stories may be weak, uninteresting, even biased, and can be viewed with pleasure or at least not with anger, but the picture should be close to reality. That way, there would be no additional need to visit other media and see what this or that channel has missed.

And it is worth noting that during the most difficult (post-war and pre-election) period, the audience preferred to watch the “Armenia” TV news program. In second place was “Shant” news and in third place Public news.

Moreover, “Armenia’s” “Zham” is a significant leader. And this has been the case for quite a long time. Maybe the restrained (still restrained) style of that channel and, by and large, the neutral (still neutral) position are in greater demand now than the news programs built in a passionate and swearing style on the channels that solve a political problem.

Petros Ghazaryan’s two programs on Public TV have the highest ratings in the list of talk shows, political and socially oriented programs. Serzh Sargsyan’s interview on “ArmNews” also had a large audience.

Among these ten, “ArmNews” and Public TV are competing with each other, with two extremely different approaches and choices of guests. These are two poles, which probably satisfy society in seeing who are in those poles.

The talk shows of other channels, which claim to be highly-watched, are not in the top ten of this genre at the moment.

“Armenia” builds its editorial policy without political discussions, instead, it completely covers the demand for comedic, entertaining programs and is also a leader in the top ten of TV series.

Two channels traditionally compete with the production of series, “Armenia” and “Shant.” The same is in the case of musical and music entertainment programs.

“Armenia” (with Armenian films) and Public TV (with international blockbusters) are leading in the showing of feature films.

It is also interesting that “Fifth Channel” has a quality list of movies and TV series, but it is not in the top ten. It’s probably because in Armenia the TV company is perceived as, first of all, a political union, which emphasizes its clear political position, creating a protestant news agenda.

And the audience, noticing this, either bypasses the quality choice of that channel or does not go looking for it on the air, if a guest comes on that channel as a consumer of political news with a specific direction.

The TRC presents its top ten according to a thematic division.

And it turns out that out of the list of children’s programs, reports and cartoons, exclusively world-made animated films were watched. In other words, programs and reports have no place here, only non-self-made cartoons. And in the first place is “Ну, погоди,” which has a history of half a century, the showing of which has placed “Shant” in the leading position.

TV ratings in Armenia are measured by the company “Admosphere Armenia,” based on the data of which the TRC presented in these graphs.

Nune Hakhverdyan