Broadcasters' Audience Research Board

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The Broadcasters' Audience Research Board, or BARB, is the organisation that compiles television ratings in the United Kingdom. It was created to replace a previous system, where the BBC and ITV companies compiled their own ratings. It is owned by the BBC, the ITV companies, Channel 4, Five, BSkyB and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. 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.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

BARB website

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