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#Post#: 145527--------------------------------------------------
Re: O/T Nations Championship games on Terrestrial...
DIR By: deadlyfrom5yardsout
Date: December 3, 2025, 5:30 am
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do those viewing figures take in to account people who watch it
after the event?
#Post#: 145533--------------------------------------------------
Re: O/T Nations Championship games on Terrestrial...
DIR By: deadlyfrom5yardsout
Date: December 3, 2025, 7:55 am
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TV ratings aren't exact
Rather than take on the impossible task of monitoring all UK
screens at once, BARB instead relies on a sample of 5,300
households – about 12,000 people in total – to represent the
viewing habits of the entire country, selecting them on factors
like age, number of children, ethnicity, house size and many
others to help ensure they give a realistic cross-section of the
country.
This means each of these 12,000 people – the so-called ‘BARB
panel’ – have a lot of viewing power. If one of them tunes into
Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday night, to BARB 5,000 people
have just done the same.
In fact, you could argue that in terms of overnight figures,
this panel has all the power. All those millions of pounds
broadcasters spend on promoting their shows? All the posters for
the latest programmes you see on the train? They’re effectively
only aimed at these 12,000 people, the 5,300 households at the
helm of the UK’s £13.8 billion TV market.
With this massive extrapolation, you're probably wondering one
thing at this point: why on earth are only 5,300 households on
the panel? Doesn’t that seem, well, an insanely small group to
represent 66 million Brits?
As with most things in TV, it comes down to money. "Like any
research project like this, you balance getting a big enough
sample to give you a robust read on what everyone is doing
across the nation and cost,” says Doug Whelpdale, Insights
Manager at BARB.
“If we had 20,000 households we would have less variability in
our data, but the study would cost a lot lot more […] If we
wanted to half the standard error in our data, we would have to
have a panel four times as big.”
And the reason it costs so much to maintain a sample of just
5,300 houses? Their sets are monitored very closely…
What happens when you join the BARB panel
Imagine for a second you’re approached by BARB to become a
member of their sample. Firstly, congratulations! Seeing as you
can’t actually apply to be on the panel, your odds of getting
selected were incredibly low (about 1 in 5,000, remember).
And it turns out joining is a pretty sweet deal: you can drop
out at any time and, although you won’t get paid per se, you can
earn gift vouchers for various high street outlets. And, of
course, saying yes means that your viewing habits really matter
– you'll actively become part of the TV process. So, naturally,
you accept the offer.
Now, the first rule of joining the BARB panel? You do NOT talk
about the BARB panel. As your viewing now represents 5,000
people’s viewing, it’s important broadcasters can’t directly
target you in any way.
In fact, publicly air that you’re a member of the panel – just
like some have done on Twitter over the years – and you’ll get
kicked off.
Above: how one BARB panel member lost their place.
Next thing you should know: after joining, BARB will install a
small monitoring box not just to the main TV in your lounge, but
to every other viewing device around your house (“Our record is
11 TV sets in one home,” says Whelpdale).
You’ll also be handed a snazzy new remote control for each
screen (or asked to install an app to your tablet or PC), with
an assigned button for each person in the house.
You’ll now need to press the designated buttons every time you
sit down to watch – and press again if you or somebody else
leaves the room. If you dash out for a cup of tea or nip to the
toilet, you need to represent the other 5,000 people doing the
same thing.
But don’t feel obliged to tune in every night – if you’re stuck
in traffic on the way home and miss The One Show (the horror!)
then you’re simply representing the other 5,000 people in the
same situation.
Going on holiday isn’t an issue, either. Just click the
designated “I’m away” button on the remote and voila! In BARB’s
eyes, you’re now the flagbearer for the 5,000 people also taking
a break.
You don’t even need to measure your attention level or how much
you liked the show, either: you solely need to log how many
people are in the room when the TV is on. It’s that simple.
But if you keep forgetting to press the right buttons or are
always losing the remote down the sofa? BARB will know.
"It's four people's full-time job to check on oddly-reporting
homes,” explains Whelpdale. “If we see that a TV set has been on
with channels changed but nobody's pushed the buttons, that's
'uncovered viewing' and that house will get a phone call with a
reminder.
“If that home is constantly doing what they shouldn't be then
they'll be removed from the panel.”
To paraphrase a certain superhero, with great power in forming
TV ratings, comes great responsibility to handle your remote
properly.
What BARB doesn’t measure
As you might guess, viewing figures aren’t completely
infallible. In particular, you probably wonder how BARB can
measure big events such as the World Cup – occasions that many
people choose to watch down the pub and away from their special
remote.
The simple answer: they don’t. Any out of home viewing (apart
from that done on select portable devices owned by their
panellists) isn’t recorded. However, this might not be as big a
problem as it seems, with only 6% of people watching TV out of a
house, according to BARB research.
“It’s actually a smaller proportion of people than you would
think who view big events in pubs – even for massive events like
the World Cup,” says Whelpdale.
“But if all of a sudden we conduct a study and 20% of the
population are watching shows in a pub or big screen elsewhere
we'd have to think seriously how we'd include that in our
measurement.”
However, while you can rest easy about sports viewing figures,
there is one area that’s a problem for BARB: smaller cable
channels. After all, in all likelihood, the sample of 5,300
simply won't represent the many niche interest groups found
across the entire UK.
“With big programmes and big channels we're more accurate than
if we're looking at smaller channels and smaller programmes,”
admits Whelpdale.
“That's purely down to the size of the sample. Any sample-based
study that is only done by a few people means you get more
variability – that's why if you look at viewing for a channel
with a smaller viewership, you'll see a lot of variability day
by day.
“What we do on that occasion is look over a long period of time.
Over a week or a month, you'll see that viewing does hit a
standard level.
“Yes, the accuracy does vary depending on what channel, what
programme and what time of day. But I would say that the TV
industry is satisfied that our data is robust.”
What’s the difference between overnight and consolidated viewing
figures?
Overnight figures: What they say on the tin. These BARB numbers,
released at 9:30am each day, comprise live and recorded viewings
of a show on the same day it was originally broadcast.
Consolidated figures: These numbers take into account how many
people watched a show within seven days of the original
broadcast, be it on catch-up or a recorded version. As such, the
consolidated numbers will be higher than the overnights.
For the latest news and expert tips on getting the best deals
this year, take a look at our Black Friday 2021 and Cyber Monday
2021 guides.
Why you don’t see any overnight ratings for Netflix?
Black Mirror, Stranger Things, The Crown: although we can guess
these are huge hits, we may never know by exactly how much.
That’s because Netflix – alongside other streaming services like
Amazon Prime – chooses to keep its ratings hidden away from the
public.
However, turns out there’s no technical reason why BARB couldn’t
provide some viewing figures for these shows. In fact, using the
current technology they use to monitor terrestrial TV, BARB
could even reveal some information about Netflix audience
demographics too.
But there’s a simple reason why they don’t: BARB doesn’t have
the okay from Netflix – or Amazon Prime, for that matter. And
let’s face it, it's a decision that makes a lot of sense from
their standpoint.
"They have no real imperative to agree while they're
subscription-based and not selling adverts,” says Whelpdale. “If
they were to say 'we're going to put a 30-second advert in front
of every programme' and invited Marks and Spencer to place an
ad, the advertiser would want to know how many people viewed it
– and they’d want numbers from an independent and objective
source."
Netflix logo
Getty
Unless that happens, it looks unlikely we’ll see Netflix or
Amazon ratings released alongside those all-important BBC and
ITV figures each morning. But what about YouTube? There’s a
video service that does rely on ads.
The chances are still low they’ll be directly competing with the
main channels in the ratings anytime.
“Obviously [Youtube] does provide viewing data at the moment,
but it's different to ours. In order to count a view, you only
need to have seen three seconds of a Youtube video. Whereas a
standard definition of ‘viewing’ for BARB is three minutes,”
explains Whelpdale. “Whilst we don't have identical standards we
won't measure them.”
Leaked viewing figures show just how valuable The Grand Tour is
to Amazon
Netflix UK viewers are bingeing so hard that they’re watching
13-part dramas in 24 hours
So, if the big streaming giants are set to keep their viewing
figures secret, will our TV ratings change drastically over the
next few years? In fact, with the growth of subscriber-based
platforms like Netflix (now at 137 million users worldwide) and
the upcoming release of services like Disney+, could public
viewing figures become a thing of the past?
Whelpdale isn’t convinced: “People will think ‘wow we’ve got all
these new ways in which we can watch. Viewing on the big screen
in the living room is just not going to happen!’. But TV change
is always slower than what people imagine.
“The one thing I’m sure of is that in five years’ time the TV
landscape won’t look drastically different.”
In fact, he says although BARB are always developing their
accuracy – for instance, they're looking to integrate exact
viewing figures made possible by online viewing and the in-depth
data their panel of 5,300 households offers – major changes
aren’t afoot.
And bearing in mind only 4% of Brits’ viewing time is currently
spent on online subscription services at the moment, he could
have a point.
So, even though we live in the golden age of TV and can stream
shows from the palm of our hands, the future of viewing figures
still lies with the BARB panel: the group who log their TV
habits on behalf of a nation, an army of 12,000 who tap a button
whenever they dash to the loo – all so you don’t have to.
To each and every one, we salute you.
#Post#: 145538--------------------------------------------------
Re: O/T Nations Championship games on Terrestrial...
DIR By: DOK
Date: December 3, 2025, 11:29 am
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The question as to "how many is representative" has always
interested me (even before knocking out the player survey!).
When someone like YouGov or Gallup, they use just a thousand or
so to represent the country. So 5000+ seems a lot.
#Post#: 145543--------------------------------------------------
Re: O/T Nations Championship games on Terrestrial...
DIR By: Rugbycat
Date: December 3, 2025, 12:19 pm
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Barb also take data from devices, without you being in the
panel.
Barb has two sources of data:
People-based data: the Barb panel.
Device-based census data for online TV viewing.
HTML https://www.barb.co.uk/device-based-census-data/
You will get a pop up message on you tv, that asks you to push
the yellow button to opt out, most people don't notice the
message as it will only come up once and only in your device
settings.
The default in device settings is always yes.
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