Australian Open reaches 4.767m viewers
It's a new era in TV ratings reporting.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
The Australian Open drew a National Reach of 4.767m viewers in the new-look TV Ratings, overhauled by OzTAM.
Today marks the first day of new-look ratings delivered to media.
Reach refers to viewers across Australia who sampled at least 1 minute of linear viewing and/or 15 seconds of BVOD.
The new data results are designed to better reflect the way we watch as opposed to the former industry standard of average viewers across linear television in the metro markets only.
The Men’s Final also drew a National TV Audience of 2.122m -this is an average of linear / BVOD across Australia, but the focus will be on Reach.
Seven News was the top performing news broadcast reaching 2.54m viewers, way ahead of Nine News at 1.479m and ABC News on 1.257m.
Seven’s Test Cricket reached 2.207m.
ABC’s Muster Dogs reached the biggest entertainment audience at 1.110m.
Amongst other Reach numbers:
RBT: 946,000
The Sunday Project: 712,000
Gladiators Grand Final: 697,000
Total Control: 611,000
These resuts can no longer be compared to previous years given major changes by industry.
Please note, TVT is yet to settle on best reporting methodology given current changes and Survey begins on February 11.
This post updates.
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- Tagged with ABC News, Australian Open, Gladiators, Muster Dogs, Nine News, RBT, Seven News, Test Cricket, The Sunday Project, Total Control
27 Responses
As numbers dwindle for FTA, this is just a way of inflating numbers lol.
Many years ago “Reach & Frequency” were the stats used to assess the success of an ad campaign. Using “Reach” to gauge the popularity of a show was considered dubious. Averaging Reach over the duration of a show would be more realistic but Networks would then need to continue their slicing and dicing with “winner announced” etc.
This is clearly the TV companies wanting to look better than they are – no justification at all to focus on reach rather than the more comparable National TV Audience figure.
I’m certainly going to miss the level of data we used to get…that was not much, but compared to what we have now, may as well have been everything. Reach should not be the new standard, it’s a vanity metric and no intelligent advertiser should base their decisions on reach alone. Total TV audience should be the standard.
Well said. This ‘reach’ figure is totally misguiding.
Suggestion David/TVT (as you said this morning you were still working through how best to present the ratings going forward), if the networks send through more data (like the older metrics we were used to), why not post them? I mean surely it’s still allowed, it’s just they’ve agreed with OzTam not to officially provide them to media etc, but that’s not necessarily going to stop the networks. As I’m sure readers would still be interested in any shares and market splits for example. I can confirm MediaSpy provided a release from Nine this morning, indeed showing they scored another incredible 50% metro FTA share last night with the Aus Open final, as well as a national share and total (incl bvod) share plus saying they won the key demos. So any info like this would still be great, so long as you agree it’s still worthwhile or something you see still being relevant. 🙂
You will see I posted a commercial share updated in the rankings. There are issues around varying delivery times unfortunately, so yes I am still working through best way forward.
That means having to trust the spin-masters 😂
Can you please explain to me in laymans the difference between “Reach” and “viewers”? I know i’m wrong, but to me, I would have thought “Reach” was the number of TV sets in the country capable of showing the program, so for the tennis, about 25m…
Reach is the number of viewers who have watched 1 min or more of linear and/or 15 secs of BVOD.
A new ratings system will make it hard to measure Tipping Point against Hot Seat and Alicia Loxley and Tom Steinfort against Peter Hitchener
The promotion of reach as a key metric reminds me of when in the early 2000s the networks would highlight “peak” if the show was rating poorly. The national tv audience should be the main figure used, the reach is like a peak and largely irrelevant. Can someone also explain if those figures are all for live viewings last night or does the BVOD cover a range bigger than the live broadcast time? All eps of Muster Dogs dropped weeks ago (Total Control undeserving of that luxury) so does that figure include people who watched last nights ‘main traditional broadcast’ episode two weeks ago.?
Peak still gets spun by networks, trust me. I asked a few weeks ago about your example. All numbers need to be tied to an episode and broadcast date. So when MD dropped the numbers were for episode one.
“ The national tv audience should be the main figure used, the reach is like a peak and largely irrelevant” agree with this 100%. Watching 1 minute means nothing but spin for the channels! Will be interested in National TV Audience.
The best Channel 10’s major news got was a woeful No. 26.
A taste of new Channel 10 ratings bottoms for them to scrape.
I still enjoyed Gladiators regardless of the critics
We did in our house too. Very fun, right levels of seriousness and comedy. Disappointing that not all the old games returned but for the most part it was great!
2.1m watched the tennis, you can compare that old numbers fine, they just want to stop you. 700,000 watched 7 News last Sunday, as a lot of people only watch the headlines it had a reach of 2.5m. So you can divide the reach value for Seven news by 4 something closer to right number. If one person watched Sinner v Medvedev and 5m watched the last minute to get the final score, you would get a slightly larger reach number. Most of the reach numbers are going to be people flicking around during ad breaks and meaningless. Reach is for doing things like measuring how many people watched something of the ABC to see if it meeting is public broadcaster obligations. Not trying to pretend that 4 times as many people watched Seven news than actually did, which is all this is about. They think it they only authorise large meaningless numbers, more people will watch ads on their channels.
I quite like it, although I do think it’s more interesting to view habits per state
I just can’t understand why state by state can’t be reported by the new system. What happens to the long running winner’s legacies of 7NEWS Adelaide and Perth for example?
Localism is so important when it comes to news and media and this feels like a leap away from that.
I imagine the networks will still be getting their detailed data/reports at a very granular level as they have done. It’s just outsiders that are being drip-fed now.
Networks and advertising agencies will still get full detailed data, it’s just that we now get to see less data.
TBH i don’t like the reach values at all. Its just spin on the truth. Watching a show for one minute could honestly entail flicking the channel for that 60 seconds during an ad break. I know this is how we will be going forward and i’m glad we have the national figures at least but no network shares? they’re just hiding behind false pretense to make themselves look good. Thats how i see it.
Hopefully David you can find a good way to display and report these numbers regardless.
‘Reach’ is purely there for bragging rights – pure and simple.
I don’t envy you David trying to work out how to display and report on these new numbers. I do like a national figure, but ranking the shows by Reach is beyond useless. Was the majority of the reach audience watching for the first minute as over run on the previous show, or the final minute as they wait for the next show to start? Is it better to have a higher reach and lower average, or lower reach but higher average?
This new reporting method just allows everyone to have a cake and eat it too.
“This new reporting method just allows everyone to have a cake and eat it too.”
And at the same time leaving everyone still hungry!
Must be a very thin slice of cake.