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.
