The Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) provides
official viewing figures for UK television audiences. It
commissions specialist research companies
Ipsos MORI,
Kantar Media and
RSMB to collect data that
represent the television viewing behaviour of the UK’s 26
million TV households.
BARB viewing data give broadcasters, advertisers and other
interested parties a minute by minute breakdown of viewing at
regional and national levels. This information is vital in
assessing how programmes, channels or advertising campaigns have
performed and provides the basis for airtime advertising trading.
In order to estimate viewing patterns across all TV
households, a carefully selected panel of private homes is
recruited. Each home on the panel represents, on average,
about 5,000 TV homes. These panel homes are drawn from a
household sample that is designed by RSMB to remain
representative of all television households across the UK.
This means it always encompasses the full range of
demographic and TV reception variations, amongst other
variables, that are found across the country and in
different ITV and BBC regions.
To account for the constantly changing UK population profile
and TV environment – and because some of the information
needed is not contained in the Census data – Ipsos MORI
conducts the BARB establishment survey on a continuous basis
to measure changes in UK household characteristics. This is
important to account for the constantly changing UK
population profile and TV environment and also because some
of the information needed is not contained in the Census
data. The panel homes themselves are then recruited by
Kantar Media, drawn from a representative sample provided by
the establishment survey. This ensures that any changes in UK
household characteristics are reflected in the BARB panel.
In every panel household, all television viewing is
monitored automatically by special metering equipment
installed by Kantar Media. Included in this process is
viewing of recorded programmes that are watched within seven
days of the original broadcast; this is referred to as
timeshift viewing. More than 30,000 viewing devices are
monitored across the panel of over 5,100 homes, including
PVRs, DVDRs and VCRs, as well as standard set-top boxes.
Residents and guests in a panel home register their presence
in a room containing a television set that is switched on,
which is the BARB definition of television viewing. They
then deregister when leaving the room. In this way, the
meter records all viewing by every person in the household
aged 4+, adding individual demographic information to the
overall viewing data. This information is uploaded
automatically to BARB every morning between 2am and 6am
where it is processed to apply various statistical
adjustments.
Each day at 9.30am the data are released to the TV industry
as overnight viewing figures. Eight days later, consolidated
audience figures are released, incorporating any timeshift
viewing from the previous seven days. In both cases this
minute by minute viewing information can be matched to the
programme and advertising schedule to give viewing estimates
for every programme and commercial that has been broadcast.
This consolidated information is the BARB gold standard on
which the UK broadcasting and advertising industries rely
for all reporting and trading.
