SAARF forum offers future shock

The forum provided insight into the changing TV arena and supplied planners with trouble-shooting tips on TV planning.

450 stations?

“The NAB commissioned the Genesis Report, which predicated we could have around 450 TV stations, including new DTT channels, regional and community services, additional free-to-air and pay-TV services, as well as Super5Media's and ODM's offerings,” she says. “PVR could have found its way into 2-million households. This will result in massive audience fragmentation.”

Add to this the migration from analogue to digital broadcasting, the roll-out of video-on-demand services, and enhanced access to affordable bandwidth making viewing on devices other than TV sets a reality for more people, and the industry has an enormous challenge to the future of television audience measurement.

“The current Television Audience Measurement Survey (TAMS) panel reliably and accurately measures what it was designed to measure, namely individual in-home live viewing through a TV,” says Long. “But this will not be sufficient for the future. Its current tender is already addressing the need for a bigger panel size to handle the expected proliferation in channels.”

Long indicated that some of the future challenges it needs to consider post-2011 may include analogue and digital (DTT) combined ARs, time-shifted viewing from PVRs, video-on-demand and recorded viewing, as well as out of home, mobile and internet viewing.

“It's probably the most ambitious TV measurement system in the world, but we don't yet know how much it will cost to achieve, and whether the industry can afford it,” she says. Naturally, this is a process and specific aspects mentioned above will be measured as and when necessary. For example, out of home viewing, viewing on mobile devices as well as the internet currently amounts to only 2.4% of all viewing.

Advice on forecasting

Such rapid change not only poses an immense challenge for media audience researchers, but for media planners as well. The speakers had this advice for planners grappling with ever-changing TV data.

MD of Telmar SPC, Sharon Penhallrick, believes that despite the ongoing changes in the TV environment, the optimum TV strategy journey should be to “follow the tried and tested strategic process, while being sure to take into account factors such as universe, samples and weighting, timing, seasonality, the campaign's objectives and so on,” she says.

Chris Eyre, managing director of AGB Nielsen Media Research, suggests that instead of asking what is wrong with the ratings, we should ask what is wrong with our forecasting. “To meet campaign objectives, you need manual intervention,” he says. “Using software-generated forecasts is simply not enough. You need an awareness of current issues affecting ratings which must be factored into forecasts.”

Lisa Botha, business director of Telmar SPC, says planners should check for events that could influence viewing and scheduling. “Keep track of public and school holidays, unusual sporting periods, news, entertainment and political events, unusual weather or seasons, month end - in fact, anything which could have influenced viewing patterns,” she says.

Knowledge of such factors is critical. For instance, Eyre believes that changes in programming content and quality could be more of a problem to forecasting than new TV set acquisitions. “Programme quality, the reduction in new content production and the subsequent need for re-runs significantly affect ratings and require planners' qualitative assessment.”

Eyre also points out that the extensive road works taking place, particularly in Gauteng, are having an effect on the time people get home and thus affect their TV viewing. “People are getting home later than they did in past years. This needs to be taken into account when forecasting.”

Eyre advises planners to match channel to channel (say, SABC1 to SABC1), day part to day part, day of the week to day of the week, and programme name to programme name, as well as match typology.

Selective adjustment

Finally, Botha says that while it is common practice to apply an overall down-weight or adjustment factor as a buffer for plans, more consideration should be given to this. “Planners should apply a relevant weighting - either up or down - to their plans,” she says.

“Other more selective adjustment factors should also be applied. Make adjustments by genre, for example, for sport and especially the World Cup. Adjust by station to account for programming quality, by time of day and by season.

Penhallrick stresses that making adjustments will be more important than ever, given the major events that will be happening this year. “And refresh your plans closer to the on-air period in order to correct any programme changes, event adjustments and so on, which might have occurred post-planning.”

Ultimately, all three speakers agreed that in this world of rapid change, one thing is certain. “Planners are going to be spending exponentially larger amounts of time doing TV planning,” says Long. “Going forward, this will have a domino effect on the cost to media agencies of servicing their clients adequately.”