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Oops. And now the ratings brought to you before OzTAM….

Online reports last night were already declaring Seven's Dirty Dancing a winner over Masked Singer. But was it?

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Well this is a first.

News Corp last night declared The Real Dirty Dancing a ratings hit over The Masked Singer -before OzTAM has issued data today.

It has based its findings on a Fetch TV app which for some time has had industry observers looking for anecdotal evidence of “Live” viewing.

Fetch boxes can give instant results on what subscribers are watching, except it isn’t always accurate -I know because I’ve tried it.

News.com.au reported, “According to Fetch TV’s Real Time Ratings data, the two-part special — marking the 10-year anniversary of Patrick Swayze’s death and awareness for pancreatic cancer — helped Seven nab a 22 per cent share of the FTA audience; pipping 10, with 19.1%.

“Both, however, were beaten by The Block, which fell behind Seven’s Ladies Night special on Sunday.

“Official ratings figures from OzTam will be confirmed by Tuesday morning, but judging by most social media reactions, fans embraced the nostalgic experiment.”

Actually it was Masked Singer that was trending at #1 on Twitter (and quite a few other places in the top 10) but again that’s purely anecdotal.

Not too sure what’s to be gained by going early. The risk of being wrong strikes me as outweighing any benefit.

Updated:

10 strategically split-coded The Masked Singer into two parts, but still came out on top. The bulk of the show drew 835,000 and it rose to 1.07m for the reveal of Nikki Webster as the Alien (despite her denying all participation last week). It also topped the demos.

The Block was in second place at 806,000 then 7:30 (596,000), The Real Dirty Dancing (580,000) and Australian Story (537,000).

21 Responses

  8. The Fetch TV sample size is actually a lot bigger than that of the OZTams boxes… so ironically whatever the Fetch Data presents is probably more reflective of the actual show ratings.

    2. It may be larger, but it has its own bias. The majority of Australians don’t have the subscriptions channels that Fetch subscribers have, so have less channels to watch and are therefore more likely to watch a free-to-air channel than a Fetch subscriber. Similarily, houses with Foxtel have more channels than Fetch, and are thus less likely to watch free-to-air given they have more choices. OzTam samples from all these groups, which helps to minimise the bias.

      1. Plus it is also down to how those Fetch TV boxes are spread out across the nation, Foxtel still use OzTam even though they could do a similar thing as they’re connected to the internet as well and could go on live via the STB. For Fetch it may be favoured by a certain group of people and a breakdown may show they are predominately in one area/suburb, which then skews it completely because you don’t have as many of different backgrounds and economical standing.

        The less well off may stay at home more often and use it live, the people with good cash flow may go out more and use it to record and watch later. So right there the rating is out if the boxes aren’t scattered around town (say if more are in affluent area than not) OzTam balance that out by their distribution of ratings boxes.

    1. Fetch is a Pay TV provider that anyone can get and has a box similar to Foxtel iQ. So they know what channel is being viewed (but not who is in the room). Some time ago they released an app, which anybody can download, which gives a snapshot of Live viewing stats. But it requires some adjustment in the settings to even come close to reflecting an OzTAM circumstance. Even then it’s only anecdotal, some times reflective and other times way off.

      1. Anybody can download the app but you need to be an authorised user to login. I wish “anybody” could view the live ratings that would be really interesting.
        Can any Fetch customer login?

    2. I ended up with a Fetch box after switching to Optus for home broadband / NBN.
      It was essentially free due to the package I was on – and also came with both Optus Sport and one channel pack included (e.g. Variety = BBC First / Universal / 13th St /UKTV etc.).

      I gotta say, having been a FoxTel subscriber who cancelled when they lost the EPL rights, I’ve been impressed. They’ve also got all the FTA catchup apps built in, and Netflix, Stan, Hulu, YouTube built in too. Has always worked very well for me (so far) except where there’s been an NBN outage in the area – which has happened once in 2 years.

      Also allows for recording of shows, pausing live TV etc – similar functionality, but not quite as easy as on the Foxtel IQ2.

      I do not work for Fetch – promise!!

      1. We also got Fetch the same way you did (Optus package) and agree with everything you say. Would also like to add that when there is an outage for Free to Air (which often happens on the Sunshine Coast) we can watch these FTA channels direct via the built in Catchup.

        1. We got a Fetch box with an iiNet deal but the thing is incompatible with our Panasonic plasma TV because the HDMI cable output from Fetch has one less pin than the HDMI input that is standard with our TV. The Fetch box has remained utterly unusable since the day we got it.

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