The Broadcasters' Audience Research Board, or BARB, is the organisation that compiles television ratings in the United Kingdom. Audience measurement Measuring how many people are in an Audience, usually in relation to Radio listenership and Television viewership The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located It was created to replace a previous system, where the BBC and ITV companies compiled their own ratings. Independent Television (generally known as ITV) is a public service network of British commercial television broadcasters set up under the Independent It is owned by the BBC, the ITV companies, Channel 4, Five, BSkyB and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. Channel 4 is a public-service Television and Radio broadcaster in the United Kingdom centred around a television channel of the same name which began British Sky Broadcasting ( BSkyB — Sky Television and BSB) is a company that operates Sky Digital, a subscription television service in the The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA is the trade body and professional institute for leading agencies in the UK's advertising media and marketing communications industry covering Participating families have a box on top of their TV which tracks the programmes they watch.
Currently, BARB have approximately 5,100 homes (equating to approximately 11,500 individuals) participating in the panel. The box records exactly what programmes they watch, and the panellists indicate who is in the room watching by pressing a button on a remote control handset. The data is collected overnight and published as overnight ratings at around 9. 30 the following morning for use by TV stations and the advertising industry. This means that with a total UK population of 58,789,194, according to the 2001 census, each viewer with a BARB reporting box represents over 5,000 people.
BARB numbers are extremely important to commercial television stations. The trading model that is used by television companies and advertising agencies depends on the number of people watching the shows and the commercial attractiveness of those people (simplistically young/well off very attractive and older/poorer less attractive). The advertising agency will pay the television station a certain amount of money based on the number of people watching a show. The BARB numbers are used to work this out. The higher the BARB numbers, the more money a television station will make.
This leads to some interesting situations on the smaller channels. Since there are many television stations, and many hours in the day, there can be situations where BARB will record zero viewers for certain programmes. As the TV advertising system is geared round BARB ratings all but the very smallest channels subscribe to BARB.
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Audience measurement Measuring how many people are in an Audience, usually in relation to Radio listenership and Television viewership Nielsen Ratings are audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research to determine the Audience size and composition of televisionDapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic