James Warburton:: “Let’s get rid of Overnights”
Seven is keen to make further changes to ratings data to helps TV put its best foot forward.
- Published by David Knox
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This week, not for the first time, Seven CEO James Warburton this week called for an end to Overnight ratings.
Speaking at a presentation to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia he said, “For 22 years the industry has owned and published the OzTAM ratings data daily. It’s been robust and world best practice. But for 22 years, we’ve shown our decline year after year after year. So, despite the changes to viewing and the inclusion of digital, as an industry we’ve been complacent and continued to do the same thing.
“At Seven, we’ve been leading the charge on changing the way our audiences are measured and reported. The industry’s new measurement platform, called Virtual Oz or VOZ, will report true viewing numbers for our content from the start of calendar year 2023.
“So, when total television is measured correctly, you can see that on an overnight basis we reach 14 million people. That grows 21% four days later and another 29% in 28 days. Now, given we trade and negotiate and post-analyse campaigns on a 28-day basis, that’s a 57% increase from overnight audience numbers.
“So, the challenge I put to my TV peers is: let’s get rid of overnights, even for just a month, and start to tell the real story. That’s what happens in the UK and the US where they focus on three days and seven days.”
This is a tussle that OzTAM shareholders Seven, Nine and 10 debated last year. Nine is understood to be against the idea, concerned that the conversation around television would diminish further.
The outcome was an agreement to move Overnight ratings data from 9am to 10am, with Total TV figures (for the preceding 7 days) released at 9am.
Personally I feel that ditching 5 city metro numbers would be a better place to start. That would instantly lift numbers and help TV put its best foot forward. I’ve been writing about that since 2013 to no avail.
At the time TV critic Michael Idato told TV Tonight, “The fact that the industry quotes national ratings which are calculated from five major cities and not the broader Australian audience, has long been a source of concern for me.
“While the statistic logic behind the methodology – that they represent discrete advertising economies – might make sense in the accounts department, it does not make sense when reporting the viewing audience for programs.
“It is not just more sensible to report national audiences using a merger of capital city and regional audiences, it is also mathematically more accurate.”
Victor Corones, Managing Director of media agency MagnaGlobal, said, “Ultimately it’s the PR departments of each network that’s trying to look for the biggest number they can take to market each day in their releases. So yes it’s becoming more frequent to see both metro and regional numbers being combined. Which makes a lot of sense when talking about Australia’s top rating shows. What’s top rating in metro isn’t always top rating in regional. I don’t see any problems having a national number reported provided it’s clearly labelled. I’m not sure if the broader market see it that way but would be surprised if there was opposition from other agencies.”
Last year I also asked all 5 networks about the idea of ditching 5 city metro numbers, and it was clear there was little consensus. Nine and 10 were against the idea because they sell into metro markets. Seven was in favour, and has since purchased Prime Media and are now selling into national markets.
Back in 2001 Kerry Packer agreed to dump Nielsen ratings books for the new electronic system of OzTAM.
“Still the One” Nine took a tumble in shares, its strangehold on TV forever changed. Within a year CEO David Leckie was gone from the network.
This is part of the historical problem with making change: somebody always loses.
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8 Responses
The overnights are available first and they correlate best with the advertising revenue a show is bringing in. They are therefore the best indicator of whether a showing is going to stay on air, get bumped, dumped or cancelled. They also tell you the most about what people chose to watch on a particular night.Y ou can’t get rid of the overnights, because they are what media buyers and programmers look at every morning. All you can do is try to censure publication of them. But it doesn’t matter what Warburton thinks, or what data you look at., Big Brother is still getting beaten badly my Masterchef and Celebrity Apprentice. And on Mondays HYBPA? is picking the largest share of those watching TV after them, and beating them all.
As i have said from the start overnight figures are not important.Watching it Live has always been advertisers the most desired approach.Some of these shows can be repeated the following day anyway so you can still catch up anyway.Overnight ratings are a pure waste of time.If you can’t watch the show when it’s screened then perhaps that show is not as important to as you think
it’s like pre-mobiles, you had to be home if somebody was going to call you, you don’t need to be home when a TV show screens anymore.
All FTA Networks are pushing their audiences onto their streaming channels where there is less chance of ad-skipping and the ads can be curated to suit the individual viewer and the time of viewing. Some programs are streaming-only to encourage the switch. Overnights go down, catch-up increases. Having created the problem the Networks now want to change the rules to keep their bragging rights.
I agree that ditching the overnight ratings would be tough, since we’ve been used to seeing them pretty much daily for 20+ years. We already see the time-shifting numbers which some other sites do tend to ignore, but should be focusing on them as time goes on.
Overnight numbers though should include a national number rather than a five-metro number. To get a (hopefully) bigger number for some shows.
I think it will be tough to get rid of overnights because we’re so used to seeing the next day what rated. But as you say, a move towards true national overnights would be a good first step. James is also correct in that we have to highlight the power of catch-up, which can double an audience.
Part of me thinks if Seven is this focused on how data is presented they’re in denial about the fact streaming services have taken a huge chunk of their audience and are now preferred content hub of choice for many younger viewers. We see even with the 7 day total tv ratings results- which include the catch up and regional figures- the top rating shows are often still older skewing news bulletins and year on year declines. I don’t see a problem with the current approach. Advertisers aren’t stupid. They know someone watching live is more likely to sit through ads than someone watching on catch up, especially viewers who might be watching 8-28 days after the content was first made available. Engagement matters too. Big thing that could help free to air is if streamers add ads, I think I read somewhere Netflix was considering it.
It’s funny how those doing badly in a metric often think getting rid of the metric is the solution.
Viewers and advertisers know the overnights don’t matter like they used too but they still give the best early indicator of how shows are doing. No reason for them not to exist alongside 7 day and 28 day data.