Amazing Race’s return gets 886,000, Denton’s Randling falls to almost half debut
Viewers are falling fast for Andrew Denton’s new show Randling, which has fallen from 859,000 on its debut to 488,000 last night, according to preliminary ratings from OzTam.
The ABC1 show rated less than Wild Life at the Zoo on the same channel, which pulled in 515,000.
The return of Amazing Race Australia pulled in 886,000 in the 9pm time slot for Seven, beating Offspring on Ten and The Mentalist on Nine.
Seven won the night overall, pipping Nine by 22.5% to 21.3%.
why is offspring not rating well it would have to be the best drama currently on.
How many households actually have the ‘boxes’ in their homes, which monitor television audiences?
Surely with the advent of 100% digital viewing soon, technology will be able to monitor real time and get the actual viewing figures? As opposed to estimates?
I have found myself watching less and less TV and my YouTube usage is increasing. Now, I would hedge my bets that the TV crew will say “2nd screen, 2nd screen!!!” However, I can tell you that that does not apply in my home… and often the old girl is either off, or I have YouTube pumping through her.
It would be interesting to understand how traditional TV stats can be taken seriously in this digital world?
I’ve had similar misgivings about tv viewing figures. In a world where its dirt cheap (of completely free if your dodgy) to get most programming when you want, sans advertising – the fact that anyone watches TV baffles me (live sport excluded). If that many Aussies are genuinely watching TV – I truly am the one eyed man among the blind.
‘Curious’, I have wondered the same thing myself for years.
I was once told Adelaide – around 1 million people – was calculated on just 400 TVs. How accurate can that be?
I often see the ratings and think ‘hmmmm…’.
And to Sean, I agree, Offspring is a quality show. I’ve only started watching it the past 4-5 weeks, and Asher Geddie is hands down the best actress on Aussie TV.
The national sample is 5,150 homes. (This is around 13,000 people’s viewing habits).
While it would seem apparent that with digital technology we could get a ‘census’ of TV viewing that is far from the truth.
What you COULD get (if there were no privacy laws – which thankfully we have) would be a census of TV tuning, IP addresses that receive IPTV etc.
However, this is measuring TV sets and not viewers to those sets. For example, the TV may be on but you have NO idea how mant people are watching a programme (or indeed whether anyone is). That would put us back to the 1960s when ratings were measured as HUTs (Households Using Television). Advertiser don’t want to know the households or even the devices – they want to know the audience (size, composition, duplication, repeat viewing etc.)
And you know the best way of getting that audience data (at the moment) … using a panel. And to put the TV panel in perspective, most political polls in Australia are around 1,000 people – and they managed to predict the hung parliament. We have a sample for TV ratings more than 10 times larger!
There also remains the issue of measuring the watching video (e.g. YouTube) as opposed to measuring the watching of television (e.g. broadcast and subscription). While it is technically possible it is cost prohibitive. Online video is (in the main) highly fragmented and with low audiences, so the ‘cost per viewer’ to measure it increases exponentially while the low audience generates advertising cents and not advertising dollars – that is the great measurement conundrum we face.
Having said that I look forward to the day when we can leverage Return-Path Data, addressable IPTV etc, and use that in conjunction with a panel to have the most accurate measurement of TV tuning (sets, PCs, tablets, smartphones) and TV viewing (people).