“Misleading Statements!” War Erupts As Seven & Nine Feud Over Ratings Yearly Results

“Misleading Statements!” War Erupts As Seven & Nine Feud Over Ratings Yearly Results
Mary Madigan
By Mary Madigan



Seven & Nine’s big dogs are feuding over the yearly ratings results, with both claiming they got the most eyeballs.

On Friday, B&T reported that as per OzTam’s ratings, the survey year has finished, with Seven nabbing 40.7 per cent of the share and Nine grabbing 37.2 per cent of the share. Seven won total people, and Nine won demos.

B&T‘s reporting is based on the rating survey, and according to that, Seven has won the rating survey (7-48 weeks). However, Nine claim they are winning from the calendar year weeks 1 to 48.

Nine can’t technically even claim they’ve won because the calendar year is not over it. So why is Nine pushing the calendar year win?

Well, Nine clearly wants to include rating successes like The Tennis in the total reporting. So, Ash Barty’s 2.8 million eyeballs record-breaking win. Nine is taking a much broader look at the 2022 ratings year and running with it.

Nine’s masthead, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Nine’s chief sales officer, Michael Stephenson, said: “It doesn’t matter how you want to look at it or how you want to cut the numbers, for the fourth year in a row Nine is the undisputed leader.

“We dominate from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.”

In response, Seven West Media’s managing director and chief executive officer, James Warburton, told B&T: “Seven is disappointed to read several false and misleading statements by Nine in its 2022 survey year ratings report.

“Nine can rightfully lay claim to winning the demographics in metropolitan markets, but it is not the most-watched or the #1 network. Those positions were won by Seven. While we all enjoy healthy competition in a hard-fought ratings race, Nine’s claims are desperate, misleading and wrong.”

Meanwhile, an Oztam spokesperson told B&T, “There is no one ‘correct’ way to interpret OzTAM ratings. Clients have diverse objectives, which require many different criteria for evaluating television performance.”

So who is the real winner? Well, it depends on how your measure, but the traditional way would be the survey.

If Nine wants to push, it should be measured via the calendar year and not the survey, which is a whole much larger conversation.

Any network can chop and change to measure by what makes them look the best. So, if all the networks come out with what they won based on differing measuring systems, it gets very muddy.

Now, if you are asking what advertisers care about? Well, advertisers typically care about the demos and snapshots of the full year, not an industry ratings version.

Ultimately both Seven and Nine have plenty to celebrate.




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