by Thinus Ferreira
Swaths of South African analogue TV households going dark as analogue transmitters are switched off in provinces without having switched to DTT and being "lost" as countable viewers, Eskom's blackouts wiping households off ratings metrics, a rise in zero ratings, technicians struggling to get to households forming part of the TAMS panel due to the Covid-19, and even a rise in available video streaming services, are just some of the massive challenges confronting the Broadcasting Research Council of South Africa (BRC) and the accuracy of measuring South Africa's TV ratings.
South Africa's TV ratings system is facing the same challenges, complaints and problems as Nielsen because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic making it more difficult to count available viewers and to track television ratings - with even some added issues as the country haltingly keeps lurching forward in its long-delayed switch from analogue to digital broadcasting and from Eskom's blackouts that it euphemistically calls "loadshedding".
In America, broadcasters are accusing Nielsen of severely undercounting TV households and negatively impacting on their television ratings - the currency used to peg ad rates - because of the Covid pandemic and lockdowns during which technicians didn't service people meter households properly and with households who moved or changed demographics.
It's not yet clear what exactly the impact has been and is with South Africa's TV ratings because of changes in counted TV households due to the ongoing Covid pandemic in the country, as well as the wiping of thousands of analogue TV households from the grid and thereby from eligibility to be counted in South Africa's TV ratings system.
The South African government and its communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams recently reneged on a decades-old promise and suddenly shockingly decreed that its flipping to a so-called staggered "hard switch-off" for provinces and ending analogue signal transmission even if all analogue TV households in a province or area haven't been migrated to digital terrestrial television.
The result is that people who made up part of the total South African TV universe and who watched television, disappear and have to be removed from the universe since they have a TV set but can't and don't watch TV any longer.
Earlier this year, the BRC announced that it planned to commission a more comprehensive TAMS (TV Audience Measurement Survey) audit due to the rapid changes in the video viewing landscape, a rise in zero ratings, loadshedding
and greater challenges faced by technicians servicing the TAMS panel due to
COVID-19.
The BRC has now received a first interim report but says that it won't be sharing "the minutiae of the interim reports".
"We will not be sharing the minutiae of
the interim reports, we will rather make the broader analysis of further
interim reports available, covering separate areas, as we receive them," says Gary Whitaker, BRC CEO.
"The consolidated final TAMS audit report will be
accessible to the industry towards the beginning of October 2021.”
The BRC says that there's been limited TAMS panel management over the past 12 months due to the Covid-19 pandemic
and restrictions surrounding the various lockdown levels.
"While the full audit is
still being conducted, the current interim report covers, firstly,
environmental review, a qualitative survey of factors including power supply,
viewing on other platforms and devices and secondly, a deep analysis of the
market landscape and its changes from recent years."
According to the BRC's interim report on its TAMS panel, several things are impacting the measurement of viewing performance.
There have been changes in the structure of TV households during Covid-19 as well as the services being used, like video streaming services over and in parallel to traditional broadcasting.
"As the market moves more to digital services
like DStv, OpenView, DTT (digital terrestrial television) etc, the choice of channels increase to the consumer. This means less time spent watching the larger free-to-air (FTA) channels, resulting in more fragmented audiences," the BRC says
"The decline in
analogue homes has accelerated in the past couple of months and will
continue as the government rolls out their plans to switch off analogue
altogether."
Then there is also performance within platforms and TV channels' ability to maintain or grow its share of broadcast TV within a
platform.
"For instance, the SABC has seen a decline in performance across all
platforms," the BRC says. "As the structure of the market has changed, the make-up of FTA
channel viewing has evolved. Analogue-only homes made up two-thirds of SABC average monthly audiences in 2019."
"By May 2021 the platform
contribution of analogue-only dropped to 52%, with DStv, OpenView and DTT
contributing more."
Then there are also questions around the share of broadcast TV as a proportion of total measured TV.
"There are strong indications
that analogue and DTT homes are supplementing their viewing with
non-broadcast content as more streaming media channels become available to
South Africans. The stay-at-home lockdown that the country has been under
over the past 18 months has accelerated this trend as families seek more
home entertainment," the BRC says .
Eskom's blackouts and loadshedding also worsened an already bad situation for South Africa's TV ratings system and tracking.
"The impact of loadshedding/load reduction is more unpredictable and can result in
significant declines in overall viewing in the short term," the BRC says.
"While the other
factors investigated are more gradual and can be considered in planning,
loadshedding and load reduction cannot be predicted - particularly weeks
or months in advance. The impact on reporting samples is greater than the
impact on ratings although the weighting process makes some corrections
for the lower samples."
"According to the report,
all these factors can and do impact performance and reporting samples and
increase the likelihood of zero-rated spots. As we know, loadshedding is the
most unpredictable and most severe of these factors."
Gary Whitaker says that in the meantime, certain
recommendations have been made based on the current findings.
These include "minute-by-minute
data" and that consideration should be given to moving the currency to minute-by-minute
data as opposed to the current second-by-second data, as it will marginally
stabilise the data at the most granular spot-by-spot level, whilst having
no impact at a program and channel level".
Consideration should also be given to the timing and narrative around universe updates.
"Timing should allow for plans to be adjusted which should encourage planners to confirm their schedules and projections. Possibly more trading target markets should be included
in the comparative tables."
Looking at source
data for planning, more recent weeks of source data would be the best source for planning as
opposed to the same time a year ago, the BRC says.
In terms of South Africa's analogue TV signals switch-off, for free-to-air (FTA) channels, the impact of the analogue switchover should
be factored in. "This is more relevant for middle to lower-income target
markets," the BRC says.
"While loadshedding cannot be
planned, from a post-campaign perspective the performance should also be
run using 'Loadshedding No' included in the target market
definition for a particular day."
"This will give the performance against
the fully available target market. However, the software systems do not
currently support PCAs over multiple days being run in this manner."
"The BRC is and will
always strive to ensure that all of our data is correct, in good health,
reflective of the situation and representative of the universe," says Gary Whitaker.
