BARB figures give a boost to commercial TV
Our weekly columnist Raymond Snoddy examines the latest BARB viewing figures for the first half of the year.
“At the very least you can say that there is no evidence at this moment that conventional television and channels are dying or that they will die anytime soon.”
There is a fundamental injustice at the heart of the current performance of commercial television beyond recessionary pressures – and there always has been. The more successful you are in the ratings the more it hits your revenues. The classic case is UTV, or Ulster Television as it used to be known. Year in, year out, Ulster had the best ratings in the ITV network and the lowest proportionate advertising revenues.
Unfair maybe but easily explicable. The ad world wanted to reach a particular percentage of the local population with a campaign and Ulster was able to deliver that a little bit too quickly. It seems like a very old-fashioned way of doing business but it looks as if something very similar is happening today.
The latest BARB viewing figures for the first half of the year, as massaged and presented by Thinkbox, the television marketing agency, shows viewers watching a record 16.7 hours a week of commercial television. This represents an increase of 9.9 minutes on the same period last year, with viewers also seeing 43 TV ads a day, another increase.
The figures also show that commercial television in all its manifestations took a 63.7% share of total viewing, with the BBC taking the remaining share. This means, according to Thinkbox, that the commercial sector has taken an additional 3.2% in the past five years, hardly surprising given the vast expansion in commercial channels.
Cause for celebration? Not exactly. Advertising revenues are down 14% year-on-year. While it is impossible to isolate the effect of the recession and increasing audience fragmentation it is clear that ITV in particular may be suffering from the immutable law of advertising – that higher audiences tend to force advertising rates down.
Can anything be done about such a law of nature? Get Graham Norton in to take down the numbers of ABC1 viewers perhaps? Dangerous strategy. Audiences are such fickle creatures they might just flock in larger numbers; remember The Producers and Springtime For Hitler. Show a Greek tragedy in ancient Greek without sub-titles as once happened in the early days of ITV? That might turn off too many of the under 34’s, not to mention the rest of us.
Advertisers might show a bit more imagination by broadcasting longer, classier ads, taking advantage of the current lower rates, but don’t count on it. ITV and the others will probably just have to pay the price of success until the recession starts to bottom out, which could be around now. Advertising, film and television insolvencies, for example, peaked in the first quarter of this year.
Despite the irritating fiscal paradoxes the importance of the latest numbers cannot be overstated. Viewing to television channels is going up not down and the BARB numbers don’t even include online and out-of-home viewing. At the very least you can say that there is no evidence at this moment that conventional television and channels are dying or that they will die anytime soon.
It is verging on the embarrassing to have to repeat such an obvious truism but it is necessary because of the oft-repeated predictions from the digerati that all viewing will soon be online etc… There are so many canards to shoot these days the simple fun is endless. Personal video recorders mean average users do not just to watch more television but more, not less TV ads – 17% and 2% respectively. The larger amount of viewing more than compensates for ad skipping. Most online viewers simply use the device to catch up on broadcast television shows that they have missed rather than endlessly searching the web like lost souls.
The move to digital, now at nearly 90%, is increasing rather than diminishing the commercial audience… Enough already. You get the general drift.