A thought just struck me as I was reading about the new series of Dr Who and how well it is doing in the ratings.
How does the BBC or other broadcaster determine how many million viewers are watching the prgramme? Is it a statistical modle based on a number of viewers questioned or can they tell what channel individual tv sets are watching at a given time? Additionally how do they then factor in extra viewers who videoed the prgramme?
Thanks
These folks handle it for the US and many other counties. I remember my uncle years ago had a little box on his tv that tracked their family viewing. Nielsen had a couple thousand of these in homes around the country and were used for overnight ratings. The FAQ at the linked site will answer most questions.
Howstuffworks article about how TV ratings are collected in North America. Many other countries use similar method with some 1000 to 5000 boxes in households across the country, they don’t necessarily have anything to do with Nielsen company. The key with this kind of system is to create a representative sample of the viewership as a whole, which is managed by many statistical checks. Even then, certain audiences are left underrepresented, especially students and younger adults. Statistical corrections may be applied to counter this. However, as you suspected, the system doesn’t take on account video recorders, nor obviously it does other ways of seeing the shows like downloading them off the Net.
In addition, there are those polls and other questionnaires on paper asking people what shows they watch weekly etc. Due to their low accuracy, these polls generally aren’t part of the published ratings.
As far as I know, this is impossible with the current technology. Even though it could be done, applying it would raise serious concerns about privacy.
I remember once a man came round our house asking what programmes I had watched and filling out a form with the information on. This was about 15 years ago now, and I was only small.
How long have these electronic boxes been used?
I work in broadcasting, but we have dealings in the UK, so I may be able to shed a LITTLE light on this.
There’s something called BARB over in the UK, and the networks over their report daily to BARB and get ratings data. It’s a little bit more sophisicated over in the UK than here in the US, because in the UK you get ratings based not only what show your commercial runs in but what position in the break as well.