The SAARF TAMS universe has been increased by over seven million individuals with the inclusion of black rural dwellers. In the past, the penetration of working TV sets and the incidence of electricity in rural households was too low to justify the inclusion of this section of society into the TAMS panel.
Following Eskom’s drive to electrify the rural areas, and with a resultant rise in TV ownership, these households needed to be included.
With the installation of over 195 TAMS meters in rural households, the television universe has now grown from 19.5 million to 26.9 million. The new black rural households on the panel come from across the country, but are predominantly in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and North West.
Cost restrictions see TAMS contractor, AGB Nielsen Media Research, under-sampling this component of the panel by 50%. If the random sample calls for two households in a specific area, only one will be sampled - their remote location and less sophisticated technology makes maintaining these households more expensive than those from urban areas.
There is, however, no strong statistical reason to sample rural households in the same numbers as those in urban communities, because the availability of different TV channels is reduced in rural areas and media fragmentation is not yet a big factor. It is claimed that smaller sample sizes can therefore effectively measure this kind of viewership.
In order to accommodate this substantial universe increase, the RIM weighting structure, which weights panelists up to a national level, has been changed to include black rural households.
What does this mean for users?
The bottom line is that when looking at ratings on an All Adults level, users will see lower ratings but more people in terms of numbers.
A programme which, for instance, drew 30% of viewers using the old universe, may for example, only draw 28% of viewers once the black rural component is added to the universe. This is not, however, a drop in ratings - the proportion may have declined, but numbers would have in fact gone up.
In TV ratings analyses which exclude black rural communities, users will see no difference in the figures.
The good news is that marketers of brands such as detergents, beer and tea, to name but a few, can now be sure of their TV exposure to the large rural communities, where there is significant uptake of their brands.
