How accurate can ratings figures be?

I find watching TV very enjoyable and watch at least four hours each day.

I do not know anyone who has/had a ratings box.  How accurate can these ratings results be?  It’s such a small cross section of people.  This topic often comes up in conversation and I cannot even find anyone who even knows of someone with the ratings box.  Based on what I know about the ratings process and as a professional acountant and business owner, I would not place any credibility in the numbers produced.  I certianly would not want to produce any financial results or recommendations this way.  I cannot beleive it’s such a hot news topic each week.

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  • AndrewB

    It point form:

    Over the 5 cities, there are only 3,500 ratings boxes – which represent over 7,00,000 housholds. That means that a rating of 2,000 actually means one viewer out of the 3,500.

    The 3,500 people selected are supposed to represent a cross section of society with equal proportions of various demographics to the whole population.

    OzTam – the body who manage the 5 city ratings – from time to time conduct tests to verify the accuracy of ratings and usually find that the margin of error is acceptable.

    The purpose of the ratings are predominantly for the benefit of advertisers, and it is all they have to go by to judge the exposure of shows and thus the ads they pay for.

    Yes, ratings are based on a small proporttion of the population but are still an adequate guide as to what shows perform well and what shows don’t.

    In a recent survey on another TV based website, only 1% of all people who repsonded said they have either had a ratings box or knew someone who did.

  • Elizabeth9

    @Stephi, great comments and questions.

    AndrewB, thank you for explaining how the system works.