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“See? If you don’t put the number out….”

Seven CEO James Warburton may not convince competitors to drop Overnight ratings, but there are still changes coming.

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Networks Seven, Nine and 10 may not be able to reach agreement over a proposal by James Warburton to halt -or pause- Overnight ratings, but in 2023 VOZ numbers will finally include BVOD (live streaming) with Overnight numbers to more immediately reflect how audiences are consuming TV.

At the moment networks issue BVOD numbers for key shows via press releases.

OzTAM also sends a Total TV number a week after broadcast, which includes Regional viewers and 7 day time-shifted (catch up) numbers.

This week’s Melbourne Cup drew 1.024m viewers in Overnight metro viewers.

But as a 10 release noted: “1.5 million viewers nationally (includes BVOD, Metro and Regional).”

Similarly the NRL Grand Final was 1.67m metro viewers in Overnights, reported by many press as the lowest since OzTAM began.

“Phil Rothfeld in the Sunday Telegraph, wrote that the NRL Grand Final was the lowest ever,” Seven CEO James Warburton tells TV Tonight.

“He was, right, because that’s the number he saw, and he compared it to the number the year before -he was 100% right. And then Nine came out said ‘Actually, that’s not right, because we had live streaming on 9Now. And they were right too. My point to them was ‘See? If you don’t put the number out….'”

In fact it was also the biggest Live streamed event in history with 389,000 on 9Now, up 7% year on year. This reflects the shifting balance in viewing habits.

Moving to VOZ numbers will also prevent data issues such as the ‘spill’ which occurred this year in which in overlap areas between metro and regional led to numbers being incorrectly reported. Seven was broadcaster most underreported in the error by Nielsen TAM. OzTAM is now issuing corrected reports for a 3 month period.

VOZ will also detail state numbers.

“That kind of stuff I think will be exciting. Certainly for clients who go ‘Why is there metro, why is there regional’?” says Warburton.

But the Seven CEO has also advocated for further changes to ratings, to move away from reporting Overnight numbers.

Historically, agreement at the OzTAM board -a data provider owned jointly by Seven, Nine and 10- does not come easily.

“The argument from my competitors is if you don’t (issue Overnights), nobody will write about the ratings,” he explains.

“I’m suggesting if you were launching The Voice or Idol, networks would be able to say, ‘Last night it did … or the AFL Grand Final did, or the Everest did’ …whatever the event was.

“It’s not like you wouldn’t be talking about the individual ratings. But I think we’re better as an industry when we’re actually reflecting how people are watching on the screen.”

He added, “It should be coming out saying ‘This amount of people watched Live BOVD’ and then obviously, in the seven days there’s catch up. That’s the way the market trades and buys, so I just think it’s something that the industry needs to be more progressive about.”

15 Responses

  1. Channels only look to change how ratings are reported when their channels aren’t doing well. Yes, Overnights don’t tell the full story and tineshifted viewing is increasingly a factor but that actually makes Overnights more important, not less – advertisers will be more keen than ever to know their ads are being watched live.

  2. Before ratings came in 1991? they were only In Sydney and Melbourne and TV so much better, there wasn’t the competitiveness of each channel pitting shows against each other for ratings in the same time slot for advertisers to direct their products at consumers. It’s a sad situation when advertising takes over and changes the viewer landscape just flog off “stuff” (which we are told we have too much of anyway by the inevitable “experts “ ) to consumers. Just watching the news on Seven last night there was 5 adds for various gambling sites and then the usual disclaimer on those pealers. (Fast forward that bit) I’ve never bothered about ratings or advertising because I tape everything including the news so I can skip the painful bits of advertising and get to what I’m really interested in the news/shows. I’m a nightmare to try and sell anything to because I do my research first, then decide what I want and go buy it and it certainly is not because of the advertising associated with it.

    1. If you’re an older viewer you’re exactly why younger viewers are targeted, they are considered not as tied to brands. And as a result why programming also skews to younger on commercial. Ads have always been on commercial TV including where the entire hour was sponsored by a certain product such as Kraft TV Theatre or The Tarax Show, so I’d suggest the situation hasn’t changed, only evolved.

      2. Exactly, plus even if you are watching on catch-up the adverts are still there and you can’t actually skip them and that’s on all the FTA Streamers.

    2. Peoplemeter ratings started in 1991 but ratings were certainly collected in other capital cities other than Sydney and Melbourne before then. Just that those 2 cities were the most commonly reported on.

      And, stations did program competitively, even back in the earliest days of TV e.g. when GTV9 in Melbourne started IMT, HSV7 tried to steal its thunder by launching The Late Show a few days earlier in much the same timeslot. Sports shows were programmed against each other. News shows, Children’s shows, movies, mini-series, dramas, breakfast shows, midday shows. TV stations have always been programmed competitively. Even back in the 1980s I used to lament The Paul Hogan Show being slotted against some other show I was interested in (I wish I could remember now what that was?!) and without VCRs at the time, I just had to miss the other show.

      And it’s a pattern that has continued all the way to now.

      Totally agree though, re: gambling ads. They really do my head in.

  3. Most advertisers by +7 days at a minimum and are increasingly looking at cross platform buys that include digital. The market is already moving to TTL Video.

  4. The reason Warburton wants to suppress the overnights is because they are facts. Facts that advertisers use to decide how best buy advertising primariarly, which determines how shows are programmed and whether they are renewed or cancelled. They also show what people, and hence the media. are most interested in — what other people watched last night. Last night I streamed a couple of shows without ads, watched an episode of Dog’s Behaving (very) Badly I’d recorded and skipped the ads, because there was nothing interesting anywhere on FTA. How people are using their screens is to watch Netflix et al., but Warburton can pretend that isn’t the case because Streams suppress and lie about all their data.

    1. Which is why they’re keen for this part: “In 2023 VOZ numbers will finally include BVOD (live streaming) with Overnight numbers to more immediately reflect how audiences are consuming TV.” As on those Channel run Streaming sites that sites showing live what’s on live FTA carry adverts that if you are watching on a device can’t be skipped over.
      The NRL GF for instance got 389,000 that weren’t reported in overnights, that stream carried the same adverts that the FTA one did, so Nine didn’t have that information for advertisers immediately. Same for shows like The Block, they’d love to able to spruik how many people are watching live on the Stream as Monday Oct 24th for instance it was 849,000 rising to 1.57m by Sun Oct 30th. I am sure they’d love to be able to add what proportion of that 721,000 extra watched live on the Streaming site for the same reason, basically all the things you list as to why for overnights on FTA proper applies to overnights Live on Streaming as well.

    1. That’s the thing! We do see total tv figures anyway and they still show Big Brother, MKR, SAS Australia, Australia’s Got Talent, Farmer Wants A Wife and Home and Away all trailing whatever airs opposite them on Nine.

    2. It’s more a case of under reporting. I agree BVOD numbers should be out with Overnights, but not in favour of dumping the latter. I’ve argued for a decade metro should go in favour of national numbers, which would help with best foot forward. As Kerry Packer once learned, change in ratings practice usually means somebody is going to lose.

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