HA3 – Task 6 – Audience Information
Audience measurement is the measurement of how many people
are in a specific audience, audience measurement can be found throughout most
forms of media, usually with radio listeners and television viewers however can
also be in relation to newspaper and magazine readership, also recently can be in
relation to web traffic on websites. The term audience measurement is sometimes
used to help broadcasters and advertisers find who is listening or reading
their content, instead of just finding out how many people are
listening/reading.
BARB
The Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) is now the official
source of television viewing figures in the UK, they compile audience
measurement and television ratings. The organisation was created in 1981 to
replace a previous system, where ITV’s ratings were compiled by JICTAR (Joint Industry
Committee for Television Audience Research) and BBC did their own form of
audience research at that time. Now, BARB is a jointly owned company by the BBC, the TP companies, Channel 4, Channel 5, BSkyB and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. Participating viewers have a small box on top of their TV set which tracks the programmes that house watches and keep track of what they view. Currently BARB have approximately 5,100 homes, which is equivalent to approximately 11,500 individuals within those homes, participating in the panel. The box which is set on the TV records every single thing they watch, participants indicate who is in the room and currently watching the TV by pressing a button on a remote control handset. The data from that day is collected overnight and then published an made available as overnight ratings at about 9:30 the next morning for use by TV stations and the advertising industry.
BARB's data is extremely important to commercial television stations. The trading model which is used by television companies and advertising agencies depends entirely on the number of people watching the shows, and the commercial attractiveness of those viewers. Once the advertising agency knows the numbers, they will pay the television station a certain amount of money which is based on the number of viewers that watch that show. The BARB figures and data is used to work out the amount of money the advertising agency will pay.