Changes Urged For NRS

Speaking at the MRG conference on Friday, Peter Bowman, media research director at WCRS, called for a change to the National Readership Survey. He said that the survey was not as robust as the research for the TV industry. BARB, he argued, provides a meaningful currency while NRS seems only to be used for things like cost ratings.

Bowman went on to say that the survey measures the wrong things, such as the quality of reading, which is of little use for an industry survey. He has called for an end to the ‘tyranny’ of Average Issue Readerships and for the introduction of impression measurements for magazines.

Taking questions from the floor, Neil Sheppard-Smith called on Bowman to lead a crusade for changes to the NRS. Bowman declined the invitation saying that that would not be a credible way to go about implementing changes.