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Nine in push for “national” ratings

TV execs are getting restless about ratings focussed on 5 city metro and not national audiences.

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TV executives are getting restless about the Overnight and 5 City Metro ratings figures reflecting the true performance of their shows.

Earlier this week ABC Director of TV Richard Finlayson described the figures as “redundant.”

TV Tonight understands there are also rumblings at the top end of Nine to shift the focus from Metro to national figures, incorporating regional audiences. At present these are logged separately by Regional TAM, not OzTAM.

Richard Hunwick, Director of Sales, Television, at Nine, told TV Tonight, “The five city overnight figures, while a useful indicator of a program’s performance, really only tell part of the story about who is watching.

“Once you factor in seven day consolidated figures, and now 28 day consolidated viewing, as well as streaming on 9Now, your overnight figure can grow by as much as 40 per cent or more.

“When you then add regional audiences, the total audience well and truly dwarfs the five city overnight figure.

“At Nine, we are at the forefront of content delivery methods by offering our programming on as many devices as possible, enabling our viewers to watch how they want to at a time that is convenient to them.”

ABC’s Richard Finlayson told The Australian that the audience for Jack Irish of 782,000 lifted to 1.7m by including iview, regional and repeats.

“Only 46% of its total came from the five-city metro viewing,” he said. “It’s just a really good example of how audiences are watching TV and why the five-city metro rating is redundant.”

The push for “national” ratings is not new. As viewing fragments, it’s in the industry’s interest to put its best foot forward.

In 2014 OzTAM CEO Doug Peiffer told TV Tonight that OzTAM and Regional TAM were still two separate businesses.

“I would say at some point it would make sense for Australia to have a true national panel. You could still break out the regional figures and sub-markets,” he said.

“The benefits would be great to the industry.

“The nice thing that we do have is it’s the same meters and (data) supplier, so it could be done. There are a few technical issues we’d have to unravel.

“But it’s something I would like to see happen.”

OzTAM is jointly owned by Seven, Nine and TEN.

15 Responses

  1. Wow a quick look at RegionalTAM figures have all top 20 shows rating from 300,000 well into the high 500,000’s. Those are some high viewership numbers to be ignoring.

  2. Of course it should be national. Canberra, Newcastle and Wollongong have a large population but are not being counted.

    I believe the Gold Coast is part of the Brisbane survey (correct me if that’s wrong)

  3. Driving around Sydney it’s interesting to see where house antennas are pointing. The northern beaches, like “Summer Bay” get far better reception from the regional Central Coast transmitters ‘just over there’. In Sutherland and in the Penrith valley area much better reception is received from the Wollongong transmitters than from Sydney. Viewers installed these elsewhere antennas back when TCN9 used to only show half of the cricket whereas WIN and NBN3 showed all. They then discovered that these ‘regional’ signals are better anyway. “Sydney” figures are diluted by this anomaly.

      1. Hence part of my “argument”. Many in the Sydney area get better reception from a regional, due to the low Sydney-located towers (whereas every other city has towers on nearby mountain ranges). Wollongong towers are south of Wollongong and have their own tx issues to Wollongong and northern beaches, even to the southern lake area, due to terrain and antennas with their back to Knight’s Hill, pointing towards Sydney. Thus, the figures are skewed, however pretty meaningless as hard to know if one is watching TCN9 or 9 from Wollongong now that the SCA brand has been killed off.

    1. With a population of less than 250K, Hobart is a real capital city in the same way that a chihuahua is a real dog. Technically, you are correct. 🙂

      I do agree that they should be included, along with the rest of the country.

        1. As far as I know only Australia classifies “regional” as areas outside capital cities.

          In the US “regional” means – anything pertaining to a particular area. So you get “Los Angeles regional hospital” serving Los Angeles and the regions around it. A “regional sports network” would be fox sports Dallas which serves the Dallas metreo area and surrounding regions. A “regional weather forecast” for the northeast would include New York, philly and Boston.

          I’m short – it has nothing to do with cities or capital cities. It’s any area of geographic mass.

          Only in Australia does regional mean “outside capital cities”

          1. Actually (mansplaining follows 😉 ), in TV terms in both AU & USA it’s mostly down to network vs affiliate coverage.

            “Metro” is areas with network-owned coverage (including the previously near-100% affiliates / now network stations in Perth & Adelaide) – the 5 cities in “5-city Metro”.

            “Regional” includes capital cities that aren’t covered by network-owned stations (e.g. Hobart, Canberra, & Darwin) and receive their 9/7/10 programming through affiliates).

            In the US it’s a bit more complicated – basically Nielsen uses peoplemeters all year round in network markets, & diaries during ‘sweeps weeks’ in affiliate markets.

  4. It’s simple, guys: if you want it to change, stop crowing about the metro figures and start focussing on the national figures. Stop sending out releases every time one of yours is a bee’s proverbial ahead of your competition on metro figures. Stop complaining that the 2 ratings agencies you all jointly own & run aren’t working together.

    In short, stop implying it’s everyone else’s fault you’re doing it wrong…

  5. It would make sense to merge OZTAM and RegionalTAM to at least provide a more accurate overnight figure. I agree the 5 capital cities are only a snap shot and times are changing and have changed and the TV industry appears slow to move on this issue!

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