Iraq

Audience measurement organisations

In the Arab world, there are no reliable data on audience and budgets, mainly because illegal access to satellite television is particularly widespread and broadcasters themselves are far from being transparent about their financial assets. Arab media scholar Donatella Della Ratta was interviewed by the author of this study in March 2016. Asked about audience statistics, she commented: "The recording of data on audience remains problematic in the Arab world: We mainly rely on surveys and data released by the internal marketing departments of the same TV channels. These stations often exert considerable pressures on audience measurement organisations and disseminated data should be taken with a grain of salt, especially when you do not know the methodology behind that." Iraq is no exception to this, there are no local audience-measurement organisations and even the aforementioned IREX figures might not be totally accurate. Furthermore, the Mesopotamian country remain an understudied case if compared with other Arab states (and especially with the hi-tech Arab Gulf markets) because access to its media market is still largely hindered by security concerns.