BARB 2010 – Industry Briefing

After four years preparation and two years setting up, today saw the official launch of the new BARB 2010 contract, where Bjarne Thelin, chief executive, and Tony Wearn, research director, presented a briefing to the television industry.

The new measurement panel takes over from 1st January 2010, comprised of 5,100 homes with new meters already in place, which is managed by TNS.

A parallel run has been happening over the past few months to provide data to BARB and ensure consistency in reporting. Tony Wearn pointed out that overall viewing to BARB reported channels is tending to be around 4% higher with the new BARB panel compared to the existing BARB panel.

There are a few changes to the structure and methodology for 2010, with one of the main ones being that the two different panels, “terrestrial” and “multi-channel” have been replaced by one “network” panel, which will be the base for all trading. This means that there will no longer be any overlap between ITV regions.

The new panel will also provide better representation of multi-platform homes, ethnic profiles, metropolitan, urban and rural population distribution.

In addition, the new meters will provide comprehensive capture of seven day catch-up services on digital cable and Sky Anytime when viewed via TV sets.

Going forward, BARB plans to incorporate a separate “pilot” non-linear database to enable additional reporting of content which falls outside the core BARB output. Initially this will relate to material viewed on a TV set.

A test panel will also be introduced that will assess new metering technology for measuring TV viewing via PCs and laptops, as well as further investigation into integrating panel data with return path server data.