BBM TV ratings info availability?

[Donovan's Monkey]

I have noticed in the weekly TV Top 30 lists posted in that thread, the lists for particular cities that formerly accompanied the national list have now disappeared. And occasionally I have read columns or articles that mention radio ratings, or TV ratings just involving sports events, and sometimes it's vaguely implied that they have to get the info indirectly through others who pass it on to them. BBM Canada has a weekly list of Top 30 shows available on their site for anyone to see. But public availability of any more information seems to be something they intentionally attempt to limit.

Does anyone understand how this works, and who they allow to access the information and if these people are not allowed to make any of it public? The Data Usage Guidelines on their website state they are "willing to grant a nonexclusive license to members of the media who write about television or radio. This license allows them to use and publish a limited, newsworthy amount of copyrighted data", with some other restrictions they describe. Does "license" imply that someone has to pay to get access to this information that BBM compiles, or can anyone who writes about TV or radio apply to get more information beyond the weekly national Top 30 lists?

[Randi]

I contacted BBM inquiring about the possibility of gaining access to the data (other than the Weekly Top 30). Here's what they told me:

BBM Canada produces weekly Top 30 lists which we provide to non-members (the National and Quebec Franco lists are posted to our website and the lists for Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton are distributed exclusively to the press on a request-only basis).

If you wanted data other than the weekly lists, you would need to obtain it directly from a broadcaster.

Makes absolutly no sense to me but that's how it seems to work.

to get access other than that, you need to be a member:

To become a full, voting member, you must be a radio or television broadcaster, an advertiser, advertising agency, or media buying house. Associate (non-voting) memberships are available to other interested parties, such as industry associations, consultants, government organizations, and U.S. broadcasters.

Anyone knows if it works the same way in the US?

[Avonregal]

Is there a fee for Channelcanada.com to become an Associate member? Why else would they be reluctant to release this information to anyone who request it? Is it a money grab?

[Donovan's Monkey]

This site has sporadically had 2014 weekly Top 30 lists for the individual markets.
http://tvcentral.ca/2014/09/30/numer...5th-21st-2014/

[Donovan's Monkey]

In 2015, talking about TV ratings is about as antiquated as talking about how many copies of an issue of a magazine get sold. But to get back to some of the questions I asked when I started this thread two and a half years ago, here's some interesting answers about Numeris (formerly BBM) and how their secrecy appears to serve the purpose of allowing all those pointless and idiotic press releases from the broadcasters to say anything they want without any of us being able to easily see what a complete load of fabricated bovine fecal matter it may be (although this particular blog from a couple of weeks ago is referring more to radio ratings than TV).
http://torontosportsmedia.com/sports...uttiness/19940

Back in the day when I used to make a concerted effort to get the ratings I used to get them from three sources; one from the Rogers side, one from either TSN or 640 and then one independent. The numbers NEVER matched up. EVER.

... Because the numbers are not released in full to the public, they leak out like they did in completely unverifiable ways. It’s crap.

I recently reached out to Numeris and tried to pay for the ratings as any member does. I was denied. The industry doesn’t want the ratings to get out in a meaningful way. It’s much better for the stations to cut, paste and calculate the numbers for their own benefit and the public to be completely misled

Although I can't find the thread, I'm relatively certain someone else here (or maybe it was somewhere else?) pointed out this Globe And Mail article
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/...ticle22838581/

about Numeris earlier this year. It's comical that they say (about the name change), "BBM conjures up diaries and books and we’re cutting edge", and the article then describes how they now need to pay for their own recruitment ads because they need "to call people at home, ask them a few questions and invite them to participate" -- presumably because it's 2015 and few people below senior citizen age still have home phones and answer unsolicited calls from unrecognized numbers.
One of the comments said they still actually do use the diaries a lot, in spite of the disingenuous attempt to imply they are a thing of the distant past. And sure enough, the Numeris website (which can't be all that old because of the name change) has the instructions telling people how to write in the diaries and return them by mail. Now that's 'cutting edge', eh? Can you even remember the last time you put something into an envelope and dropped it into a mailbox?
http://en.numeris.ca/participants/TV-diary
http://en.numeris.ca/participants/radio-diary

[PokerFace]

Bovine fecal matter tastes like chicken. Pour a little bit of cat urine on it to spice it up.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/02...n_6607718.html
[Rogers blames Numeris for lower NHL ratings]

TV ratings for NHL games are in free fall this season, and part of the reason appears to be viewers cutting their cable cords and switching to digital and mobile to get their hockey fix. But that’s not where Rogers — which owns the rights to NHL broadcasts in Canada — is laying the blame. Instead, the telecom giant is pointing the finger at Numeris — the ratings agency that measures TV viewership.

“We have been in discussions with Numeris for some time about the reporting of both regional and national sports viewing,” said Scott Moore, president of Sportsnet and NHL Properties at Rogers, as quoted at the Globe and Mail.

“As you probably know, several sports properties seem to be down, which is contrary to what we are seeing south of the border.”

For its part, Numeris said it hasn’t found anything wrong with the numbers, but will continue to monitor the situation.

...

The survey found that the percentage of Canadians who follow the NHL on TV fell to 44 per cent in December of last year, compared to 50 per cent a year earlier. Meanwhile, those who followed the NHL on a digital, social or mobile platform grew to 26 per cent, from 23 per cent.

“The problem lies in the fact that the TV drop is bigger than the digital increase,” SRG president Kaan Yigit wrote.

[Donovan's Monkey]

A Toronto Sports Media blog post from last month about Numeris ratings, again more about radio but much of it certainly applies to TV.
http://torontosportsmedia.com/sports...s-wrapup/20783

... As far as I can see, this is the only civilized place (Canada) where radio ratings are NOT fully available to ANYone who wants them, even at a price.The media is so petrified that the truth may be seen by the public that they actually enforce penalties to those who leak the results! We could start with the flawed prehistoric diary version of asking people to record what they’ve listened to. Or we could discuss how lame the devices are that record what people are actually listening to. Beepers? What is this 1980?..

Let’s add to that the puzzling secrecy around the recorders themselves and it’s a perfect sh!t storm. They don’t release who has them, how old they are, where they are (none of which is protected by privacy in aggregate) nor do they release how often the device holders are changed.

... Every single executive I talk to says the same thing, “the system sucks but it’s the only one we have.” The truth is the system sucks but they own the system! They can demand change.

Hmmm... penalties? Did someone at the CFL/TSN maybe get angry about a few of those regional Weekly Top 30 lists a couple of years back showing that most of their viewers are indeed in the prairie provinces (as everyone probably thought anyway) and not so much in Toronto, undermining their insisting that they still have lots of TV viewers in Toronto despite the nearly empty stadium?

Someone also mentioned this podcast interview from January with Mike Richards (this was only a few weeks before he got shifted from mornings to afternoon), where he talks about many things including how dubious the ratings system is. They have so much trouble getting people to take the pager things ("meters") that people keep them for five years.
http://www.torontomike.com/2016/01/t...isode_156.html