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ABC ratings to embrace national, online and 7 day data.

ABC will bid goodbye to Overnight, 5 city metro ratings in 2015.

2014-11-18_0009ABC will move away from reporting Overnight, 5 city metro television ratings, in order to reflect numbers for its national, multi-platform audience.

ABC Director of Television Richard Finlayson yesterday told the Screen Forever conference it would publish expanded data next year.

“We want to take the lead on this and change the ratings conversation, because the current measures for the ABC -and broadly the industry, but particularly for us- are just no longer relevant,” he said.

“In 2015 you won’t be hearing metro ratings from the ABC. We’re a national network and frankly we’re doing ourselves a massive disservice by publishing the metro numbers. 30% on top of the metro numbers are added by Regionals.

“We will stop reporting the Overnights and we will move to a Live Plus 7 model. So we will be looking at Live ratings of 7 days of Consolidated viewing.

“We will also report iview plays and Users as well.”

But the numbers are unlikely to impact OzTAM reporting which measures programmes on an industry-wide level playing field. It is yet to introduce either truly national or online views.

Key ABC shows that have premiered or simulcast on iview have seen lower broadcast numbers.

Jonah and Please Like Me are already drawing audiences equitable to terrestrial broadcasts.”

The change to ABC publishing national and online data follows SBS Managing Director Michael Ebeid claiming OzTAM numbers were “not very accurate” because there were no People Meters in the Northern Territory to gauge viewing for NITV.

Yesterday Nielsen also published the first Twitter TV ratings, tracking social media chatter of TV shows.

This weekend ABC premieres Nowhere Boys online and on air at the same time.

5 Responses

  1. The ratings folk pick and choose what type of viewer gets the boxes….so I cannot see how that is accurate….but does tell the advertiser if their chosen target is watching…and I guess that is the name of the game…not how many people are watching.

  2. The ABC using National figures is just about the ABC trying to fool the public because National figures are not readily available to them for comparison.

    The 5MC figures are accurate for NITV They tell you that hardly anybody in the 5MC watches it. They don’t tell you anything about the NT, nor do they claim to. That doesn’t mean SBS can just make what ever claims they feel like about NITV viewing in the NT without evidence though.

    Viewings and +7s are as important to the ABC as Lives + SD figures because they don’t rely on advertising. But they have to be real figures and not by inflated 3 or 4 times by server dropouts and restarts or people watching half a show, then coming back later and watching the rest and being counted as 2 viewers.

  3. I also agree just reporting the metro figures which do not accurately reflect viewing audiences around the nation.
    Last time I looked Hobart is a capital city, yet it is lumped in with regional data.

    Or is it too hard for OZTAM to do this or maybe too costly.

  4. Have to agree with this. Only reporting metro figures is really out of date now. 96% of homes have access to all 15 or so FTA channels.

    I think OZTAM will go to this sooner or later.

    No sure L+7 will become industry standard though. More likely L+3

    Remember ratings exist for advertiisers. The networks sell L+3 but I’m not sure advertisers pay for L+7 viewing.

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