Wot? No Ratings?

I see BARB seem to have a problem or two.

This from Waveguide:-

'Television ratings were suspended yesterday for the second consecutive day, and will not be available until January 15.
Under normal circumstances, the information would be at broadcasters' fingertips one day after transmission.
The usual Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB) figures have been delayed because of a change to the measurement system.'

The full story's at:-
http://www.waveguide.co.uk/latest/news020104.htm

According to The Indy, this new ratings system is going to be a bit of a disaster anyway. The new BARB panel watch 5% less TV, so viewing figures could fall through the floor.

It'll be interesting to see what sort of a panel BARB have picked, the last panel has been interesting, especially with the BBC1/ITV1 fight, with BBC1 claiming victory for the first time ever! It'd be a disaster if they went and picked a very pro-commercial TV panel and found that BBC1's audience amongst this lot was significantly lower than ITV1's. Similarly, if they pick a very pro-public service panel, as they have done in the past, you'll get BBC1/2 and Channel 4 powering ahead, along with big take-up of BBC digital services, such as News 24, and ITV1, C5 and Sky News falling off a cliff.

As well as all that, the new ratings aren't going to include commercial breaks, which in theory will give ITV the advantage over BBC, but who knows..

Broadcasters do have more information than they used to though - you can now produce elaborate minute-by-minute graphs showing channel audiences, the numbers of people switching from one channel to another, and cross-reference them against a still image of what was on-air on each channel at a time.

Pity then the audience panel is so small..

William