Leading TV Stations Petition Media Ratings Network
Stations criticise panel compositions, fear falling audience share
The CVSC Sofres Media joint venture is under fire from a network of leading television stations for what is claimed to be unrepresentative sampling leading to misleading ratings. The stations are unhappy at the low ratings accorded to their shows and are putting the blame on the quantitative media ratings service.
The stations aired their joint grievances in a letter sent to CSM earlier this month which was shown by station representatives to CMM-I last week.
At the root of the stations' concern lies the increasing competition from media outlets competing to offer media value and the threat this competition poses to leading broadcasters' audience share.
The group of 36 leading TV stations, including all provincial-level terrestrial stations along with special cases Dalian TV, Qingdao TV, Xiamen TV and Shenzhen TV, signed a letter of complaint after discussing their concerns over CSM methodology at the meeting of the China Provincial-level TV Stations Annual Advertising Conference held in Shanghai at the end of May.
Many of the stations are clients of CSM, while some are understood to refuse to pay for CSM's service on the basis that they provide data to the national audience survey network.
The stations claim that their channels' real popularity is being under-reported by CSM's figures, which they say are giving inflated ratings points to city-level and cable stations to their own detriment. They claim that CSM's sample panels are unrepresentative in the provinces they cover because they are not wide enough in reach.
Media brokers in China can confirm the discrepancies between the ratings figures the stations publish themselves and CSM's own findings. Meanwhile, the stations' own ratings services have long been criticised by agencies and advertisers as subjective and by implication unreliable and unscientific.
The knock-on effects of independent ratings figures on TV stations will be downward pressure on airtime costs and reduced advertising revenue as advertisers spread their media budgets.
The irony is that CSM's diary record methodology of tracking viewing habits should favour the larger stations with their established brands and higher recognition in the average Chinese household.
AC Nielsen's peoplemeter results, which AC Nielsen has announced will be available for 10 cities by the end of 1999, are even more likely to pull down ratings figures for the larger terrestrial broadcasters. In other markets, new peoplemeter ratings services have always tended to pull down terrestrials' share in favour of cable channels.
The stations stated their requirements to CVSC that:
CSM adjust its sample panels to better reflect the displacement of populations;
CSM publish separate ratings figures for provincial-level and city-level stations;
Ratings for provincial-level stations should include figures for average ratings for their whole provinces.
The stations asked that CSM release details of how it will adopt the measures they demand be taken via the China Advertising Association by June 15.
In a reply, CSM said that it had already advised the same provincial-level TV stations, from whom it purchases the viewing diary data, to expand the scope of their sample households, without any resultant reaction from the TV stations.
CSM said it could basically comply with the stations' requirements and asked that station representatives come to its Beijing HQ on June 22 to further discuss the implementation of new proposals.
Shenzhen TV complains about shallowness of Shenzhen sample: In another related incident, Shenzhen TV has complained that CSM's sample in the Shenzhen area covers only two of the city's six districts, and the resultant ratings figures are inaccurate, misrepresentative and bringing adverse consequences for the station's ad revenue and program planning. Shenzhen TV also poured scorn on CSM's claim of 98% cable penetration in the two districts, claiming that the true penetration was in the area of 70%.
Shenzhen TV required that CSM, in its published ratings figures, give clear details of the composition of the Shenzhen sample, that it widened its Shenzhen sample to take in all six of the city's districts, and that it adjust the published cable penetration rate for the Futian and Luohu districts.
In its response, CSM explained that according to its methodology, if households registered a cable channel among viewing choices at least 2 weeks out of 10, then that household would be considered to be a cable household. 93 out of 100 sample Shenzhen households had recorded viewership of cable channels.
Upon further investigation, CSM discovered that 19 of the 93 households did not have cable, hence the true cable penetration for the two districts was 74%. CSM said the problem was that the city's terrestrial and cable TV systems both carried signals from the four Hong Kong terrestrial channels.
Some households mistakenly thought they were viewing cable channels when watching the Hong Kong channels. CSM said that it would formulate plans to improve its representative sample in Shenzhen.