Bus TVs an abuse of transport franchises

John Ure (South China Morning Post, October 19) could not be more right when he says that KMB's bus TV survey is questionable.

Passengers' repeated requests in the past two years to the Transport Department and to KMB for details of the survey's research method have fallen on deaf ears. Perhaps AC Nielsen would like to clarify, through these columns, how it collected the data.

A passenger was able to download, from the RoadShow Web site, some information about the survey. The marketing firm only asked passengers who watched TV during journeys of more than 30 minutes. Let us say out of 100 bus passengers approached, 30 watched onboard TV for more than 30 minutes. AC Nielsen's survey revealed that 22 of these 30 viewers (72 per cent) liked the contents of the TV programmes. The aim of the marketing survey is to help RoadShow improve the programmes for those passengers who do watch TV. It is not a public transport service survey.

The Hong Kong Transition Project, led by Michael DeGolyer of the Baptist University, found that fewer than a third of bus passengers liked on-board TV. Details of the research method are openly available.

The Transport Department's Passenger Satisfaction Survey (PSS) asked passengers if they accepted (not if they liked) bus TV broadcasts. I wrote to the department suggesting it modified its questions from 'accept' to 'like'. It said there was no need to make such a change, because 'the questions asked in the PSS have been designed by an independent professional survey firm'. It transpired that this firm was AC Nielsen.

The bus TV controversy is not even a majority-rules issue. Bus TV is an abuse of public transport franchises. It is about the government allowing the franchisees to exploit helpless captive passengers who have no alternative means of transport.