BARB Maps
POSITION TO DECEMBER 2009
The BARB system was based on gross, that is overlapping, ITV1 terrestrial analogue regions. Each such region had its own panel and from that base all audience data were produced; for ITV1, GMTV, Channel 4 and Five regions, macro regions and Network reporting.
WHY CHANGE?
Increasingly analogue terrestrial reception is becoming less prevalent and from 2012 will cease to exist. A system, therefore, based on terrestrial analogue geography will become obsolete. Moreover, the digital platforms already have different regional geographies. Whilst regional measurement remains a core BARB requirement, the need to accurately reflect all the other important characteristics of television means that the system is under increasing strain. From 2010 there will be a single Network panel from which regional data for 13 regional net panels will be produced. The basic geographical building blocks of the new panel will be non-overlapping areas based upon the Sky Digital reception delivery.
Changing the audience reporting conventions for ITV areas and derived ITV1, Channel 4, Five and GMTV macro regions improves and simplifies the reporting system. The BARB 2002 conventions and procedures were necessarily complex in order to deliver reporting requirements. To cope with the increasing difficulty of respondent understanding for correctly identifying the regional area in which they live and the increasing diversity of broadcasting delivery, there is a need to remove from the new service any complexity that may prove counter-productive in the overall task of producing reliable regional viewing estimates.
Net ITV Area Reporting
Net area reporting avoids the need to classify either the Establishment Survey or panel households by ITV reception and ensures that the reporting universes and reporting panels are defined on a consistent basis. Net area reporting procedures means that all regional viewing undertaken within a region will be reported against the regional variant, for example, all regional viewing within the London area will be reported as London viewing, regardless of its actual origination. (In previous ITV area reporting universes were based on the home ITV area and only viewing to the home ITV station was reported at regional level, out-of-area viewing was only reported at the network level). The new reporting convention should report similar regional audiences (000s) to the previous convention but it will tend towards providing higher TVRs as regional audiences will be expressed within a more tightly defined and, therefore, lower universe (as the overlapping geography is replaced by a smaller ‘net’ geographical area). Reporting both ‘home’ station and ‘out-of-area’ regional viewing within regions will have the general effect of balancing out the reductions in area size. As with the previous service, all regional viewing is captured and reported.
BENEFITS
The benefits of this approach are both to simplify and enhance the accuracy of BARB data. All regions continue to be reported and a true reflection of total impacts for each channel are provided across the network. The advantages for calculation procedures are significant: weighting of net ITV areas promotes the possibility for a unified ITV area weighting scheme; a net ITV area building block approach to the construction of macro region audiences is retained without risk of double counting or losing out-of-area viewing; complementary panels and halving rules have become redundant. Guest factoring and sub-group factoring are not affected by the procedures for constructing macro regions.
BBC MAP
Regional viewing is also available for 14 BBC regions.
