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Introducing Review Filters, Edit Comments and a Ratings revamp

Big changes as Summer Hiatus ends!

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  • Revamp of Ratings reports
  • Big new shows back on air
  • TV Tonight summer hiatus ends
  • Annual Programmer Wraps
  • New Review filters
  • New Edit Comment function

Monday is a huge day in TV land, with big new shows back on air and major changes to the way TV Ratings are reported in media.

It’s also the end of summer Hiatus here at TV Tonight meaning the 2024 Programmer Wraps begin with Free to Air execs talking through their annual content.

There are also two new features added to the site from tomorrow: Review filters, to help you with recommendations, and a new Edit Comments function.

TV Ratings

OzTAM has overhauled the way it issues Ratings results to media, marking the biggest changes in two decades.

Ratings will move to 11:35am Sydney time and expand to national results, including BVOD, to better reflect the way we watch.

But it will no longer issue Daily Shares, Multichannel or Subscription numbers separately to media. City by City results are also no longer supplied to media.

Metro results will also no longer be visible, instead focussing on National Reach (1 minute or more viewed and/or 15 secs or more of BVOD), plus National Total TV Audience (including BVOD) and a National BVOD breakout number.

These changes have been pushed by commercial broadcasters, and we’ll have to see how this pans out.  I’m still waiting on some info in order to understand how smoothly I can publish new data and now expect to publish ratings news posts after midday.

History also tells us with any OzTAM change of this magnitude there will likely be losers too. Kerry Packer famously fired David Leckie when Ratings moved from diaries to digital because Nine suddenly lost market share. As we move to National results, will Seven and possibly public broadcasters see improved figures? Time will tell….

Hiatus ends, Programmer Wraps

From Monday, TV Tonight ends Hiatus and resumes posting across weekdays. This week sees back to back Programmer Wraps with TV execs who talk about the coming year. These are lengthy but always full of extra info about upcoming shows!

Review Filters

I’m always looking at ways to improve what the blog can offer and have spent summer building a database of the 1400+ reviews on the site.

From Monday you will see new filters in the Review section designed to help you find recommendations by Genre / Format / Platform / Star Rating and Year. These are powerful tools you can mix and match according to your taste and viewing platforms. No other website offers this level of user functionality and Aussie detail.

This has been a big job to pull together so if you spot any errors please reach out via Contact page. Reviews are categorised via their original platform, dating back to 2007 (some early reviews were without Star Ratings).

Here’s a demo:

Edit Comments

You asked for it, you got it. From Monday there will be an Edit function for Comments which allows you 2 minutes to amend a Comment you have submitted -ideal if you have made a typo. This will be in Beta mode for the time being.

It’s a big week ahead, lots of change and some leaps into the unknown!

David.

43 Responses

  2. A big week (and a big year) ahead. We’re all here for the ride. I swear every year it gets harder and harder to tell when you are on hiatus, the site is still so active and always so much ‘behind the scenes’ work you do. Excited to see edit comments and review filters go live.

  3. Just when I thought TV Tonight couldn’t get any better. Keep up the great work, you’re the first website I visit each morning as I have my morning coffee.

  4. Great updates, thank you.

    The biggest UI enhancement you could make though is to roll the News, Programming & Subscription categories into one category. It’s really annoying on mobile to dig in to categories to get to page 2, then navigate back to the home and start all over again with the next category.

    It would be different if each section only gets a few posts a day, but you’re a machine with content (thanks btw) so it becomes a time suck. I know it’ll impact ads but I’m sure you’ve seen the ratio of readers move to mobile first.

    Hope you don’t interpret this as negative overall feedback, I’m still here every day for the content 😉

  5. The new review filters look fantastic; such a good idea. Also very pleased to see the coming edit function. There’s always a dumb typo I pick up as the comment flies out of my grasp!

  6. Grate news about edditing coments. Not onlee cant half the peeple spel on this site but gramarr is also bad too as well. Hopefuly this make coments reeding easyer.

  7. Thanks for all the heard work over summer, the new features will be greatly appreciated, will love the edit feature as usually as I push post I see autocorrect has changed a word that makes no sense and it’s too late to re correct, great addition.

  8. Sorry if this is a silly question but just on the subject of editing our posts. Sometimes my fingers work faster than my brain on the spur of the moment and I will regret saying something about someone on TV that may come across as a bit nasty. Am I able to delete my whole message? I also would love to see the ‘like’ to comments I agree with. David, even though your hiatus seemed to be very short, I am happy you are back fulltime.

  11. Having a peek at the overnight ratings has been a morning highlight for me for almost ten years.
    So I’m a bit sad that it’s moving to later in the day.
    But … I realise it’s out of David’s control.

  12. Hope you had a nice break David, I also like the new review filters and it was nice to record the demo about this new filter, that way anyone can a review so much easier with this filter.

    Looking forward to the year of television ahead.

  15. Warburton publically pushed for these rating changes. Paramount+ would vote with Seven because they must be sick and tired of people reporting when they run 4th or 5th. Leckie was scape goated. There were differences between the Nielsen and Oztam samples. Both tried to blame the other. Seven and Ten pushed for Oztam because they believed the Nielsen samples were biased towards Nine. Here, Oztam has spent over a year getting this ready and only thelive streaming is new. My enthusiasm is focused on some new Pointless (#29.2 doesn’t seem to exist?). Also Signora Volpe S1, which the SMH reviewed it in 2022 as one of Acorn’s best mysteries, it has run on Foxtel too.

  16. I think the ratings are unfortunately going to skew/inflate yes the like of Seven and ABC, who receive larger audiences/shares in markets like Perth / regional WA and regional in general, possibly helped by their larger Over 55s base. This will probably be reflected in the “reach” (viewers tuning in for at least 1min to any program on any channel during the course of the day). Makes you wonder how Nine feel about this, who, let’s face it (also seen during the AO this past fortnight) dominate Sydney and Melbourne, have the biggest shows on TV and bvod (9Now) and most importantly own the younger space (25-54s, 16-39s, Grocery Buyers). 10 will probably be happy, as national including bvod but more so reach will really give all their numbers a boost, including key demographics where they perform.

  17. Phenomenal work. This site only ever moves forward…and there’s been lot of moves over the years! I just wonder if David had any time to himself over the hiatus break… 🙂

  18. Thanks David. I liked how the way they implement the Edit your own comment. On some occasions, i made some silly spelling errors when typing comments.

  19. The quality and reliability of the news and information service your website offers has not diminished one bit over Summer and it feels like you haven’t had a hiatus at all. Good for us and I hope at least things slowed a little for you. The changes sound exciting, the only I think deserves more scrutiny is the networks colluding to keep capital city ratings numbers secret. What is the point of that? It seems regressive. The public should be able to know how content performs in different remarks and the fact that from Monday we can’t find out which news service is more watched in Sydney or Melbourne etc. is a backward step they need to explain!

  20. Welcome back from you summer break, but by the looks of it, you worked very hard behind the scenes.

    It will be interesting with the Ratings tomorrow. Some good things to come out of it, but a lot of “bad things” coming out f it for us, the viewer. And the things that will be omitted to the media/ public.

    And the Review Filters does look good. A big well done to that task.

  24. The feature to edit your own comments will be great! Too many times I’ve submitted comments with stupid spelling mistakes (auto correct is to blame).

  25. Looking forward to the year ahead and hopefully not too many teething problems when posting about ratings David!

    I loved the video you created for finding a review. Just last week I used the search function to find a review. This new feature will benefit readers like me to find reviews quicker – so thank you 🙂 I will also love the edit function (often noticing a typo once I have hit ‘post comment’).

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