Unit 6 Task 5

Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board (BARB)

5a)

The Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB) was created in 1981 to replace

two previous systems; Joint Industry Committee for Television Audience Research

(JICTAR) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) completed their own

research. BARB is jointly owned by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky and

the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.

They are a company that provide official viewing figures for each channel in the UK.

They have 5100 panel members that have a meter fitted to every television in their

home including laptops, computers and tablets to monitor their television viewing

habits and help estimate how many people would watch each channel, what

programme they would watch or a general genre of television. They commission

three research companies; Ipsos MORI, Kantar Media and RSMB to collect data that

represent the viewing behaviour of the UK’s 26 million TV households. The data from

the meters are sent back to Kantar Media at 2am before being processed and

weighted to be representative of the whole of the UK. They are then released to the

industry at 9.30am each day. These figures are called ‘overnights’ and show all of

the previous day’s television viewing.

BARB viewing data offer clients, such as broadcasters and advertisers, a minute by

minute breakdown of viewing at regional and national levels. This information is vital

for assessing how programmes, channels or advertising campaigns have performed

each week or even by each month and provides the basis for airtime advertising

trading. The advertising agency will pay the television station a certain amount of

money based on the number of people watching a show. The BARB numbers are

used to work this out. Higher BARB numbers usually mean more advertising revenue

for the television station. The trading model that is used by television companies and

advertising agencies depends on the number of people watching the shows, and the

commercial attractiveness of those people.

I looked on the BARB website to find out what the most popular programme was in

week commencing 19th June. It was the Euro 2016 football, England V Wales match

on Thursday 23rd June on BBC1 that received 7.678 million viewers.

5b)

I researched the viewing data on the BARB website to establish the weekly viewing figures for three UK soaps using 300 words for each, with a 10% leeway. The results were as follows:-

1. EastEnders – BBC 1

From Monday 13th to Sunday 19th June 2016, EastEnders was the top soap to be

watched on television, with ratings of 6.341 million views on its Tuesday’s episode,

6.208 million views on its Thursday’s episode and 6.11 million views on its Friday

episode, as shown in the chart above. This clearly shows that the 7pm episode on

Tuesday to be the most popular, followed by the Thursday episode at 7.30pm and

lastly the 8pm episode on Friday to be the least popular. This shows that the later

the time and further into the week it is, the least popular it appears to be. This could

be that viewers like to watch television earlier on in the evening on a week night and

they could go out more as the week progresses, as traditionally people would go out

on a Friday or Saturday night. A second point I noticed is that EastEnders is usually

on a Monday night, but this was cancelled due to European football. Therefore the

Tuesday viewing of EastEnders might have attracted more views because the

EastEnders audience had not seen an episode on Monday night and were eager to

watch Tuesday’s episode.

The second table above shows the EastEnders viewing figures from Monday 30 th

May to Sunday 5th June 2016. This clearly shows that Monday’s episode is the most

popular and Thursday’s episode is more popular than Tuesday’s episode. This

contradicts the data in the first table. I believe this is due to the European football

because Monday’s episode is the most popular and viewers want to watch it, as they

have not seen it since Friday, but due to it being cancelled to football, viewers

automatically watched Tuesday’s episode, as if it was Monday night. The rest of the

statistics above coincide with the first table with Thursday’s episode more popular

than Friday’s episode and in both tables, Friday is the least popular, which I believe

is because the audience go out on a Friday night.

2. Coronation Street - ITV

From Monday 13th to Sunday 19th June 2016, Coronation Street had the highest

viewings of 6.16 million, on its Monday’s episode, followed by 5.58 million views at

8.30pm also on a Monday. Subsequently the Sunday episode at 7.30pm had 5.57

million views and the least watched episode was Tuesday at 8pm with 5.38 million

views. This showed that people preferred to watch episodes on a Monday rather

than on a Tuesday and this could be to the fact that Tuesday’s episode is on later at

8pm, as opposed to Monday’s normal episode of 7.30pm. Although more people

watched the second Monday episode, I believe that this is due to the fact that they

are already watching the first episode and so just remain in front of the television and

watch the second episode afterwards. Another point I noticed is that Coronation

Street dominated the top spot in three out of four episodes and was higher than the

European football viewings.

To realistically compare viewings, I analysed Coronation Street’s statistics prior to

the European football to establish whether the football had influenced any of the

audience’s viewings. I choose Monday 30th May to Sunday 5th June 2016 as this

was the most recent week that did not show the European football. I noticed that

Coronation Street dominated all of the top five spots on the chart below. Also

Wednesday is the highest in this week at 6.24 million views, followed by both

Mondays, then Fridays, whereas in the first chart it was Monday, Sunday, then

Tuesday. Neither chart give a clear indication as to which day is more preferred than

others except Mondays being the top of the list in both, so that is the most

consistency in both findings. I believe that mixing the episodes over different days

also doesn’t give a clear picture as to what the correct viewings would be. More

research over more weeks would need to be achieved, to determine the most

popular days.

3. Emmerdale – ITV

From Monday 13th to Sunday 19th June 2016, Emmerdale maintained the fourth,

sixth and seventh slot out of the top ten programmes on ITV in that week. The

highest viewings were on Monday with 5.4 million, followed by Friday with 5.02

views and the least watched was Sunday with 4.27 million views. I believe that

people don’t watch television on Sunday as they probably go out at the weekends

and at 7pm are either still out or returning home and getting things ready for their

daily commitments on Monday. I noticed that although it was the second most

popular soap on ITV, it still had higher ratings than the European football, which

showed that viewers preferred the three Emmerdale episodes over football.

As the chart above shows from Monday 30th May to Sunday 5th June 2016,

when all six episodes were shown, Wednesday’s was the highest with 5.19

million views, followed by Tuesday’s with 5.05 million views, then Thursday’s had

4.84 million views, which was closely followed by Monday with 4.83 million views,

then both Friday episodes with 4.6 million views and 4.48 million views.

Again before and during the European football, the viewing data is unclear, as

they show different days to be higher in different weeks. The only programme

that could possibly take some viewings from the data in the first chart would be

the European football as it was one-off events, which were only shown at a

similar time to Emmerdale on Sunday and Monday. Although Sunday was the

lowest viewings at 4.27 million, Monday was the highest episode shown at 5.4

million views, so it doesn’t necessary mean that this is due to the European

football. No other program on any other channel would have likely detracted from

the above figures as Channel 4 receive approximately 2 million views on their

programs and Channel 5 only receive approximately 1.5 million views on theirs,

so they would not deter people from watching Emmerdale.

5c)The equivalent organisation to BARB in the US is Nielsen based in New York.

They study what consumers watch, read, play, browse and buy in forty seven

European markets, across one hundred and six countries around the world.

Nielsen’s watch division amount to approximately 45% of global revenues and

gives them a complete view of buying trends and media habits on television,

books, music, video games, alcohol, health and beauty, beverages, snacks and

baby products. Major clients include NBC Universal, News Corporation, The Walt

Disney Company, CBS, Google, Nestle, Time Warner, Discovery Channel,

Safeway, Fox and Walmart. A list of clients and partners are shown below.

They can be found at http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/solutions/measurement

The chart below shows the number of adults watching television per month.

I researched Days of our Lives, an American soap on NBC television network

that was created in 1965 and has had fifty seasons to date, with season 51 due

this year.

The table below shows total views, household views and women ratings from 13 th

to 17th June for the age groups of 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54. It also contains views

for 18-34 and 25-54 age groups. The second table shows the day to day viewings

for that week.

I discovered that they do not contain any male viewings data nor does it contain

any person under the age of 18 or over 54. I believe that they purposely want to

target 18 – 54 year olds as they are more likely to buy products that are

advertised on television and they are the ones that physically shop for goods.

Compared to the UK, I believe this to be a sexiest attitude as men would very

likely buy goods advertised on television and just targeting women, they are

narrowing their market.

I also noticed they the US are more thorough as they compare last week’s, and

last year’s ratings alongside that week’s ratings, so the information is available at

a quick glance. With BARB for the UK statistics the report shows the total number

of viewings and other reports have to be accessed in order to find any further

information which can be time consuming.

I found BARB to be more easily accessible, as it clearly states on their website

how to access the television ratings. On the US ratings site, Nielsen it is far more

complicated to access the information and it takes a vast amount of time to

search through all the reports until the information is found. Overall I prefer the

UK system of retrieving information for television viewings as it is quicker, easier

to understand and in a simple format to read.

Ratings Report for the Week of June 13-17, 2016Category Viewings Compared to Last Week/Compared to

Last YearTotal Viewers 2,074,000 -53,000/-229,000 <—— new low *Households 1.57/5 -.01/-.13 <—— ties low (4th straight

week)Women 18-49 Rating 0.54/4 -.03/-.13 <—— ties low ***Women 18-34 Viewers 91,000 -2,000/-14,000Women 18-34 Rating 0.27 same/-.4Women 25-54 Viewers 456,000 -22,000/-98,000Women 25-54 Rating 0.76 -.03/-.15* Previous low: 2,081,000 (May 23-27, 2016)

Day-To-Day Ratings Household Total viewersMonday 1.63 2,211,000Tuesday 1.66 161,000Wednesday 1.65 2,128,000Thursday 1.53 1,963,000Friday 1.43 1,923,000