SAINT TROPEZ: The news for the television industry was all gloom and doom in 2001-2002, right? Wrong. There was a positive upside to the bad times as far as the business was concerned, according to data released by French audience measurement and survey company Mediametrie, Eurodata TV and IMCA .

The data is part of what is known as the New On The Air (NOTA) survey. The survey covers eight countries: the UK, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, the US and Spain.

The year experienced an overall 35 per cent increase in the amount of new programmes (and an 8 per cent increase in the number of hours) compared with the previous year. In all, 1,117 new titles were launched between September 2001 and end May 2002, compared with 824 new programmes in the previous year, and 926 titles in the course of 1999-2000.

Six of these eight countries reflected the overall trend. The UK had 232 new titles (94 per cent over the previous year) on terrestrial television, Netherlands 190 new titles (a 59 per cent increase), France 185 new titles (a 73 per cent increase), Germany 150 new shows (22 per cent increase), Spain 66 new shows (60 per cent increase) and the US 67 new shows (6 per cent increase). Italian television launched 13 per cent fewer new titles to total 145 while Australia was in the red by 3.5 per cent with 82 new titles.