Pres. Park’s New Year’s press conference has higher rating than last year

President Park Geun-hye’s New Year’s press conference on Monday had a viewers’ rating of 16.1 percent (conducted by Total National Multimedia Statistics, TNmS, based on households across the country and the combined ratings of 11 channels), up by 0.5 percentage point from last year. According to TNmS, the president’s New Year’s press conference on Jan. 6 last year had a combined rating of 15.6 percent.

The rating peaked at the beginning and the end of the press conference. The rating was highest right before the press conference started at 9:57 a.m. (18.3 percent) and then modestly declined to 14.2 percent. It rose again to 16.2 percent when the press conference came to a close at 11:31 a.m. By province, South Chungcheong Province (23.1 percent), North Chungcheong Province (21.9 percent) and Gangwon Province (19.2 percent) had high ratings. Seoul and its vicinity had 16.9 percent.

Nielson Korea, another TV ratings measurement company, said the combined rating of 10 channels was 20.1 percent, which rose 0.7 percentage point from last year’s 19.4 percent.