Television Diaries: Arabic Media Consumption in the EU

Abstract

Even in our globalised times, television ratings are national and dominated by a few commercial companies. Digital Spy, a website, claims to give ratings more depth, immediacy and reach than normal. In fact, they use commercial national data and ‘tapecheck’ the starting and finishing times of programmes. This much-vaunted innovation, which they call ‘attentional’, is useful for advertisers who need to know when their potential customers turn on. In spite of appearances, however, Digital Spy adds very little. They re-package the data gathered by large companies and check starting times for accuracy. That is not surprising. Ratings data are expensive to gather, normally requiring diaries or set-top boxes to record what is being watched. Ratings diaries contain grids, which each viewer in a household is asked to fill in. For set-top boxes, each viewer in the room logs in and the settop box electronically checks the channel being watched. The method is cumbersome, and the data is regarded as unreliable as viewers are simply not very consistent when it comes to detailed recording of whether they are actually watching television or not (Ang, 1996, part 1).

Digital Spy presents comprehensive daily ratings reports, covering overnight performances of both the terrestrials and multi-channels … The ratings represented on DS … use the official ratings data supplied by BARB (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board) — the organisation responsible for providing the official measurement of UK television audiences. (Digital Spy, 2013)