Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board

We had to find out about BARB on the Internet finding good websites which explain what it is. Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board is the organisation responsible for providing the official measurement of UK television audiences. BARB is responsible for providing estimates of the number of people watching television. This includes which channels and programmes are being watched, when they are watched and the type of people who are viewing at any one time. Viewing data is collected second-by-second and delivered on a minute-by-minute basis for channels received within the UK. The channel viewed the longest in a clock minute is attributed the viewing of that minute. Viewing at anything other than normal speed (fast forwarding/rewinding live or recorded content) is not reported. The data is available for reporting nationally and at ITV and BBC regional level. Viewing estimates are obtained from a panel of television owning private homes representing the viewing behaviour of the 26 million TV households within the UK. The panel is selected to be representative of each ITV and BBC region, with pre-determined sample sizes. Each home represents, on average, about 5,000 of the UK population.

The panel member does not need to do anything else in order for BARB to capture all the viewing in their household everyday. Throughout the day the meter system stores all viewing undertaken by the entire household. Every night between 2am and 6am the data is automatically downloaded from every panel home (a process known as ‘polling’). The data is processed to incorporate numerous weighting and grossing variables before being released to the industry as "overnight" minute-by-minute television viewing data at 9.30 each morning. This includes any recorded material played back on the same day as the original transmission, referred to as "VOSDAL" (Viewing-On-Same-Day-As-Live). Broadcasters, amongst others, use overnight data to provide them with an initial idea of how the previous day’s programmes and advertising have performed.

Channels reported by BARB provide timings of the programmes and commercials they broadcast. The records that this produces are then matched to the minute-by-minute viewing data to produce the BARB official audience viewing estimates for each individual programme and commercial. Panel members are not paid to participate but they are thanked for taking part with a choice of self-selected gift vouchers from a variety of outlets to appeal to all ages. They receive a quarterly Panel Newsletter which contains competitions and the opportunity to enter free prize draws.

http://www.barb.co.uk/about/tvMeasurement?_s=4