War of words erupts as Aussie ratings fight rages on

SYDNEY: The fallout from Australia's twin terrestrial television ratings system continues to scorch all those who come into contact with the fracas. As long-time industry leader Network Nine continues to lose ground in the ratings to Network Seven under the new ratings system it lobbied hard to introduce, the ousted incumbent ACNielsen has called for an independent auditor to be brought in. OzTam was brought in as the official ratings agency for Australia's three commercial channels and two non-commercial ones after ACNielsen lost the decade-old contract to the newcomer, which is owned by Seven, Nine and Network Ten. But the two companies continued to produce data in tandem, revealing major differences. OzTam showed Seven leading Nine in six of the first 11 weeks of 2001. In the week of January 21, Nine's audience share fell to 24.3 per cent, compared with Seven's 34.9 per cent - an unprecedented gap. To make things worse, OzTam data showed that up to a million people in a nation of less than 20 million were not actually watching any TV at all. This led Nine to continue with ACNielsen data, a route also taken by the ad agencies responsible for allocating Australia's USdollars 1.6 billion advertising spend. Seven's managing director Maureen Plavsic was quoted as saying that Nine's use of ACNielsen data was "completely outrageous". She added that the data "statistically is really unreliable". Ian Garland, the managing director of ACNielsen Media International, immediately countered: "She and her colleagues at the Seven Network might like what they see in the OzTAM ratings, but there is no basis for criticising the ACNielsen ratings or the Nine Network's use of them." He added: "We note with interest that in recent weeks the OzTAM viewing levels have begun to more closely resemble ACNielsen's reported viewing levels; given our data has remained relatively stable over this time it would seem that questions should be asked of OzTAM." ACNielsen offered to take part in an independent audit review of both it and OzTAM system. "We are confident our procedures and processes will pass scrutiny," said Garland.

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