Television

Ratings delay for SBS World Cup   Author: eNews staff and agencies | Jun 13, 2006, 16:50

SBS isn’t impressed, nor would be the Football federation of Australia or soccer supporters generally.

In fact you just wouldn't read about it, anywhere. In fact no one could have scripted it.

No, I'm not talking about the thrilling three goal finish by Australia over Japan in their World Cup Soccer game in the early hours of today.

No I’m talking about the ratings problem from the measurement company, AGB Nielsen Media Research which conducts the ratings on behalf of the Oztam group. Oztam is owned by the three commercial TV Networks, Seven, Nine and Ten.

This problem has stopped the ratings figures for yesterday and last night being released and stopped SBS from naturally boasting about what would have been quite a sizeable audience for last night's game.

All recipients of the ratings data received this message at 8.15 am Tuesday :

"Dear All,

"AGBNMR was unable to complete polling of all panel homes overnight. Therefore ratings data 20060612 will not be released today.

"Ratings data for 20060612 and 20060613 will both be released tomorrow 14th June 2006.

"Kind regards"

To say SBS was unimpressed would have been an understatement. “Unbelieveable" was one reaction.

The commercial networks also don’t know how their various programs like the various news and current affairs broadcasts went.

Being a holiday Monday in most of the country the real interest would have been on the size of the audience watching SBS. Coverage started at 10.30 pm and the game itself kicked off at 11 pm and it would have finished around 1 am Tuesday.

So what does this all mean and how did it happen?

The ratings are collected for Oztam and here's how it describes the process on its website:

"Once a household has been recruited, all television sets are monitored by the meter system. The meter records and stores time, date, television set on/off, channel to which each television set is tuned, capturing all broadcast viewing. All residents and guests register their television usage using a remote control.

"Every night the data is retrieved automatically via modem telephone software (silent phone call). The production system performs the collection, processing, validation, weighting and final production of each household's data.

"Once the production processes have been completed, the television program information and ratings are integrated. All data undergoes rigorous quality control both electronically and manually.

“All results are released the following morning and the data is made available to our subscribers via a secure website."

That's the theory.: the breakdown was in the retrieval (polling) of the meter boxes in the early hours of this morning. That generally takes place from around 2 am to 6 am and this sees information on each panel member’s viewing downloaded automatically.

Some TV executives suggested the data was corrupted from some of the panels and the polling couldn’t be completed accurately.

There are 3,035 metropolitan homes in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth with meters and this includes pay.

There are 2,015 homes in regional areas of Australia with meters, including pay.

There are an extra 1,000 pay TV homes with meters (this is across all markets, metro and regional).

There is no word on which panel could not be polled or the reason why it could not take place. The best guess at this stage would be some sort of communication or computer problem.

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