Radio and TV stations; how do they know how many people are tuned in?

Question

Radio and TV stations; how do they know how many people are tuned in?

Answer 1

Not sure about radio figures.

But I did read somewhere that a certain number (I think a few thousand) of people are paid to log their television viewing and this is used as a guide to the nation's viewing. I wuold imagine that they must used a very broad spectrum to get the most accuarate numbers.

I wouldn't mind signing up to be paid for watching tv!

Answer 2

And how do they know if you have recorded the programme do they still count that in their ratings

Answer 3

technology

Answer 4

BARB, the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board, is the organisation that compiles television ratings in the United Kingdom. It was created to replace a previous system, where the BBC and ITV companies compiled their own ratings. It is owned by the BBC, the ITV companies, Channel 4, Five, BSkyB and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. Participating families have a box on top of their TV which tracks the programmes they watch. Currently, BARB have approximately 5,100 homes (equating to approximately 11,500 individuals) participating in the survey. The box records exactly what programmes they watch, which is then reported back to the TV stations and the advertisers. BARB numbers are extremely important to commercial television stations. The trading model that is used by television companies and advertising agencies depends on the number of people watching the shows. The advertising agency will pay the television station a certain amount of money based on the number of people watching a show. The BARB numbers are used to work this out. The higher the BARB numbers, the more money a television station will make. This leads to some interesting situations on the smaller channels. Since there are many television stations, and many hours in the day, there can be situations where BARB will record zero viewers for certain programmes.

Answer 5

For TV, Nelson TV Ratings or something like that gives a pretty good percent on how many people are watching TV

For Radio, they can send out surveys  via email or mail.

Answer 6

They do polls.

Answer 7

As others have posted, It's basically by polls done to gauge viewership.

On TV, In the Major markets (Top 50) Nielsen Ratings company actually monitors what people in a small group are watching (these people are volunteers for this by the way) and those figures are published as ratings...This is done for all shows. (this is done via set top boxes and a booklet sent to a participant to log what they have watched for the week)

Outside the top 50 markets, Nielsen monitors also but only what comes over national networks using the set top boxes and diaries.

ON radio, Arbitron and to a very lesser extent Edison Media Research, monitor what people listen to in two ways, one is asking people to log what they listen to in Diaries like Nielsen was doing above. However they found that people lied, or forgot to log the right stuff. So as of late they are trying a beeper like device that "senses" what people are listening to called Personal People Meters... Since it doesn't require no action by the user other than wearing it, it's more beleiveable in what people are listening to.

But anyhow, this is how they do it.... sample as small size group, see what they listen to and estimate from that small group about how many total are listening in the general public.