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Ratings data “on track” for Wednesday

Nielsen advising clients of "fantastic progress" on data, and hopes to deliver numbers on Wednesday.

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At this stage it looks like ratings data will resume on Wednesday.

A Nielsen spokesperson tells TV Tonight, “As you are aware, Nielsen has experienced an unexpected disruption relating to the Australian TV Audience Measurement (TAM) data centre environment. This disruption is derived from a ransomware attack in which Nielsen was the victim.

“As of today (27 July), we can confirm that our global and local infrastructure teams have made progress on our recovery phase. Also, as previously communicated, we can confirm that the availability of TV ratings remains on track for delivery by Wednesday, 29 July. In addition, at this stage of our recovery process, data for the missing days (July 21 to date) has been secured.

“Our top priorities remain to ensure that the environment is safe and to restore and release the missing days and ongoing overnight ratings.

“We would like to thank our clients and the industry for their patience and understanding while the Nielsen team works through this unprecedented situation that has disrupted Australia’s TV ratings service.

“We will remain as transparent as we can with new information as it becomes available.”

Data is expected to include numbers for the Big Brother finale, Australian Ninja Warrior, Between Two Worlds, Farmer Wants a Wife and Wentworth, amongst others.

Update:

OzTAM statement:

Please be advised that Nielsen will resume delivery of TV ratings data tomorrow (Wednesday, 29 July).

Nielsen have also confirmed that data for the missing days (July 21st to date) has been secured and that no ratings data has been lost.

The release will start with data from 21 July and move forward from there.

Thanks for your patience and understanding as Nielsen have worked through an extremely difficult situation.

Further Update is here.

6 Responses

  1. An excellent question. I’ll take a punt at the answer. Nielsen is a US based ‘ratings’ company operating in dozens of countries around the world. As per the above article, TAM is the initialisation of ‘TV Audience Measurement’, and OZ of course refers to Australia. Overall, Nielsen is the owner corporation providing the ratings, and they do that with a product called OZ-TAM especially named for the Australian market. I’m happy to be corrected on this if need be.

    1. Nielsen is who OZTam subcontract out to:

      · OzTAM first awarded the contract to supply television audience measurement
      services in Australia to the AGB Group (now Nielsen) in 2000.
      · That contract was extended in 2007 for the period 2008-14.

      OzTAM today announced the extension of its contract with global information and
      insights company Nielsen for the supply of television audience measurement (TAM)
      services in the five Australian metropolitan markets. The new agreement takes effect on 1 January, 2015 and continues through 2017.

      Then:

      In 2017, the metropolitan homes measured will increase to 5,250, Regional TAM homes will increase to over 3,000 and subscription viewing homes to 2,120. Additionally, OzTAM’s renewed its contract with Nielsen as a sub-contractor through until 2020.

      Via PDF here: oztam.com…

      1. Whoops meant to say that OzTam is jointly owned by Seven West Media, Nine Entertainment Co and Ten Network Holdings and at one point Nielsen and OZTam were in competition, then Nielsen pulled out (later buying AGB Group).

  2. I must admit I’ve never paid much attention to how the ratings data is actually collected, so this may be a stupid question. So, if Nielsen is the data collector, what is Oz Tam’s role?

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