Subscription television sales boss: TV industry needs to start talking with one voice on ratings

Tim Burrowes

July 22, 2011 10:03

The CEO of subscription TV’s biggest sales house has called for the whole television industry to agree on a single way of discussing audience metrics.

Speaking on today’s Mumbrellacast, Multi Channel Network CEO Anthony Fitzgerald said that although networks would always use specific metrics to market their best features and demographics, the industry also needed an overarching measure that everybody would work from. He said:

“Every network must look at their greatest strengths and where they are performing well and where they are targeting their performance and sell that aggressively, no question.

“What I’m calling for is a standard industry measure that everybody reports on, all journalists report on, that priovides a broad industry measure, to measure performance over the longer term. All the other sales spin below that should absolutely occur based on individual programs and individual channels and overall performance against different demographics.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.