Television’s working holiday

With the launch of MasterChef: The Professionals and My Kitchen Rules during the summer non-ratings period, Marcus Casey asks who’s really paying attention to the ratings switch off.

Back in the pre-1991, pre-people meter days, television ratings were recorded by viewers in handwritten diaries. There were eight four-week surveys between February and December each year, and the data was laboriously collated.

It created the system of non-ratings weeks and ratings weeks which still exists today. This now-quaint system saw ratings only collected between week seven and week 48 of the year (excluding two weeks over Easter which were also declared non-ratings), and the television industry went into a slumber during summer from the first week of December – right before the biggest retail spending period of the year. Effectively, this was to give the diligent diary writers a holiday of sorts.

When the ratings went off, repeats filled the schedules, advertising spots were cheaper and viewers were frustrated and bored. Despite the introduction of people meters, this continued for more than a decade.