How did the covid-19 pandemic shape television viewers’ habits in Hungary?

Absztrakt (kivonat)

The thesis aims to examine whether and how the quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic changed the viewing habits in Hungary. If this hypothesis turns out to be correct and significant changes can be observed, I would like to further analyze how long these changes lingered after the quarantine itself ended. Since the majority of the country’s population had to stay home from March 2020 to March 2021, we can expect that the lack of entertainment opportunities would urge people to use the ones available at their home more, such as the Internet or television. However, not only did the people’s lifestyles change drastically for a year, but television channels also had to adapt to the situation. The production of television shows, the broadcast protocols, and the program schedules had to be altered. These are all significant factors that are worth researching when examining this period in the history of television. For my research, I am going to analyze Hungary’s audience data from the pre-covid years (2018- 2019), comparing it to the period of the quarantine (March 2020 to March 2021), and finally contrast it to the months after it ended (April 2021 to December 2021), as a part of my quantitative research. It is important to see the correlation between new content created during this period and the changes in program schedules as well, therefore I would like to conduct a qualitative interview with Péter Kolosi, the deputy CEO and director of programming at RTL Klub. I am also going to supplement these methods with an online questionnaire to arrive at a more complex conclusion. Since linear television is currently going through various changes, this study could support the overall understanding of this process and give a clear understanding of how and why these changes are happening, and how they are potentially affecting Hungarian television.