Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 15th October 2006

It has taken a day or so of analysis of the publicly available BARB data, but there are one or two interesting conclusions out of this week's data.

It doesn't happen very often with multi-channel programmes, and it is more memorable because of it, but one programme on one of the multi channels did reach the 2 million mark. It was Sky Sports 1's coverage of England's international football game, which scored a massive 2.03 million viewers. This helped the channel to gain a 2.0% share / 15.3% weekly reach.

In the wake of the recent Sunday Times story about NASN possibly being sold to ESPN, I thought it might be a good idea to check out the ratings data. Unfortunately, there is no publicly available ratings data for NASN, or indeed any of the Setanta channels. However, I am able to look at ratings for the channels owned by Disney, ESPN's parent company.

ABC1 dropped to 0.3% share / 5.6% weekly reach.

Disney Channel achieved 0.4% share / 5.5% weekly reach, whilst its +1 got 0.2% share / 4.5% weekly reach.

Disney Cinemagic got only 0.1% share / 2.2% weekly reach, whilst the +1 got 0.1% share / 2.1% weekly reach.

And finally, ESPN Classic, barely registers in terms of share and only 0.9% in terms of weekly reach.

ESPN have beenn trying to get into the European market for years, part owning EuroSport for a time, but have never truly broken through. A deal for ESPN to buy NASN may well be on the cards. We'll wait and see.

ITV2 once again wins the ratings battle this week with 2.1% share, and ITV4 is improving ratings wise, now up to 0.6% share with a 13.3% weekly reach.

Sky One's recent steal of Lost from Channel 4 may well be the boost it needs ratings wise, as they still languish at 1.6% share / 22.3% weekly reach. This is despite a good 1.189 million viewers tuning in for the Sunday premiere of an episode of The Simpsons. In fact, there are no top 10 entries in the Sky One chart for any other programme, which kinda highlights how poor their shcedule really is. Unsurprisingly, Sky Three gets more viewers than Sky Two, but there is little really between them. Sky Two is 0.5% share / 12.6% weekly reach, whilst Sky Three is 0.6% share / 16.4% weekly reach.

Other programmes of note scoring well, include the More 4 premiere of the controversial documentary-style drama, Death Of A President, which gained 293,000 viewers on Monday 9th October. Two repeat showings on Friday and Saturday BOTH scored over 130,000 viewers, putting the three showings at numbers 1, 6 and 7 in the More 4 Top 10. Indeed, the Channel 4 multi-channels did well this week, with all of E4's top 10 shows gaining over 300,000 viewers, which demonstrates an incredible degree of consitency, and Film 4's showing of Forrest Gump got 638,000 viewers, which boosted the channel's ratings this week to 0/8% share / 14.4% weekly reach. Film 4 has definitely benefited tremendously ratings wise from moving away from a subscription model.

With most +1 channels, they significantly less viewers than the original. However, this does not apply to the Travel Channel. In terms of Weekly reach, the original gets 126,000 viewers whilst the +1 manages 207,000. Not exactly something to celebrate though!

That performance though does keep them out of this week's bottom 5, by about 3000 viewers. Not exactly a lot, but worth a glass of something strong, none the less.

In reverse order, then, at number 5 is All In Sport, the repackaged Poker Channel, with a paltry 123,000 viewers. Number 4 is Eat Cinema, with 107,000. That's more than double any of the bottom 3 channels. At number 3 is Sky Travel Shop with just 49,000 viewers,only marginally better than Number 2's Redemption TV with just 45,000. But the worst performing channel this week, is MUTV with just 42,000 viewers weekly reach.

AIMing wide of the mark, with old news

Cliff Kincaid should really be a little more on the ball than this if he wants his "Accuracy In Media" organisation to be treated seriously, and do a little more research.

In his latest Media Monitor column, dated October 24th 2006, Cliff highlights a headline on Al-Jazeera's english language website "Death Becomes Bush" which is a headline for a story about the Film 4 / Newmarket Films production "Death Of A President" which recieved an international premiere at the 2006 Toronto International Film Feastival in September and won the Fipresci Prize. It was also aired recently on both More 4 and Channel 4 in the UK.

The Media Monitor column is full of the usual Republican talking points about Al-Jazeera, referring to the fact that it airs a lot of terrorist produced video and stating that it's another reason why Al-Jazeera International should be kept out of the USA.

Now, the problem here is that the story Cliff Kincaid is referring to, is 12 days old. The date stamp on the Al-Jazeera story is October 12th 2006. It has taken Cliff 12 days to write this article and put it on his website. The timestamp on the RSS feed indicates it was added at 6am UK time. I picked up the RSS feeds at about 10.30 am UK time, and sat down to write this response. I advise you to look at the time stamp on this article. It has taken me far less time to put together this response, including the research of the various articles and items, that I have linked in this story.

I would also advise Cliff Kincaid to go and watch the film, when it is released to cinemas in the US on October 27th. He might discover, as I did when I watched it on More 4, that the real story in the film, is not the assassination of President Bush, despite the title, but how a country copes with an event like this, and how it can get it wrong, even when the evidence points to something completely different.

The film is controversial, of that there can be no doubt. It is also very provocative. But, if you go into it with an open mind, not a closed one, you'll discover a film that challenges and provokes thought. But then, I have yet to discover an open-minded conservative.

Bias In The Media - Don't conservatives get it?

I have noticed something in my observations of the various blogs and commentators on the internet, and that is that there is no single "enemy" organisation for conservatives. Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Natalie Solent and others regularly target almost all other mainstream media outlets. The BBC, The CBC, The ABC in Australia, US network newscasts, Al-Jazeera and Air America Radio are among the favourites, as are The New York Times and The Washington Post, but nearly every news organisation cops it from conservatives, except one.

Fox News Channel is about the only major news provider than conservatives do not attack for reasons of bias. Why? Because Fox News is as biased as they are.

They accuse everybody else of being biased, and yet cannot see their own bias. Perhaps they should challenge their own opinions every once in a while, like I do on a daily basis. Maybe they'd realise that it's just slightly possible that the majority may be right and they may be wrong.