MCTV refuses access to promised poll results

MCTV is refusing to honour its promise to provide complete access to a poll it says proves 68 percent of Northeastern Ontario television viewers are satisfied with its re-tooled regional newscast.

The refusal comes less than one week after the Sudbury station promised in writing that "complete poll results are available on request."

In daily phone calls beginning last Tuesday, SooToday.com has asked for copies of MCTV's poll, conducted by Pollara Research, an independent public opinion and market research company with offices in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Montreal and Bathurst, New Brunswick.

We indicated during several of these calls that we were interested in seeing specifically how many people were surveyed from each Northeastern Ontario community.

Today, Mark Oldfield, executive producer of MCTV News, responded to our request on behalf of the station.

Oldfield indicated some parts of the poll related to business matters and popularity of various programs and personalities, and the station didn't wish to release them because they are proprietary research.

At 3:58 p.m. today, Oldfield sent us the following Email:

****************************** Hello David, Here's the info. regarding MCTV's viewer poll:

-- The MCTV Poll was conducted by POLLARA Research. -- Polling was done between January 14 and January 25, 2002. -- 400 people were polled across northeastern Ontario. -- Participants were selected randomly from telehphone exchanges on a population-proportionate basis. -- A poll of this size and nature is consider accurate +/- 5%, 19 out of 20 times.

The question was phrased as follows:

How would you rate you level of satisfaction with MCTV news? - Very Satisfied - Satisfied - Dissatisfied - Very Dissatisfied

68% were either Satisfied or Very Satisfied. 32% were either Dissatisfied or Very Dissatisfied.

Sincerely, Mark Oldfield, Executive Producer - MCTV News

At 4:13 p.m., SooToday responded with the following request for full details on how the study was conducted:

****************************** Hi Mark:

How, specifically, were these people distributed across Northern Ontario? How many in each community?

Does POLLARA break down the responses according to community?

As I requested, please provide ALL information related to methodology.

Otherwise, your own data is suspect, using the criteria established by Sharon Bowes in her statement last Tuesday.

David Helwig news director. sootoday.com

****************************** At 5:07 p.m., Oldfield responded:

The POLLARA computer model selects participants on the basis of telephone "prefixes" -- the first three digits of a telephone number. The computer has access to all residential telephone numbers in the survey area and selects participants on a proportional basis. So, for instance, if 5% of the people living in the survey area have an "897" prefix (which happens to be my number in Val Caron) then 5% of the calls would go to that prefix. In this way, the client is guaranteed a sample which reflects the population distribution in the survey area.

POLLARA did not produce results for specific communities. The +/-5% accuracy rating applies strictly to the entire 400 person sample. As I'm sure you already know, accuracy tends to decrease with sample size. If a quarter of the calls were made in the Sault Ste. Marie market area (a reasonable estimate), the sample size for that portion of the survey would be 100 persons. This, by itself, is not enough data to guarantee +/- %5 accuracy 19-ou-of-20 times. Therefore, the 68% satisfaction rating can only be discussed in terms of the entire survey area -- Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury, Timmins, North Bay and the smaller communities in between.

As with most major polling firms, 30% of the calls are monitored to ensure compliance with methodological standards.

Sorry to be so longwinded with this response. I'm trying to anticipate all of you questions with regard to method and controls.

Sincerely, Mark Oldfield, Executive Producer - MCTV News.

****************************** Craig Huckerby, a SooToday.com editorialist and president of Algoma Broadcast Group, said this evening that he's also been unsuccessful in getting the Pollara poll results.

"I applied for the full results. I have not even had the courtesy of a yes or a no," Huckerby said. His fledgling company wants to apply for a television license and is a potential competitor for local advertising dollars.

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