ATV breaks 30-year industry practice with new ratings study

ATV has bailed on fellow industry players for the first time in 30 years to independently adopt a different way of measuring the ratings of its television programmes it believes to be underrated.

But the station's move amid the pending issue of new free-to-air television licences has drawn severe criticism from its former rating research partners, rival TVB and the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies of Hong Kong (HK4As). They say ATV is ditching an internationally recognised ratings research method and creating an unfair business environment for advertisers.

ATV has enlisted the University of Hong Kong's public opinion programme to conduct its own survey on the audience's ratings and views on the station's fare, after it declined to renew its partnership late last month with research firm CSM Hong Kong, which was jointly commissioned by TVB and HK4As in 2004 to conduct ratings for terrestrial channels.

In addition to viewing numbers, the new study, which costs ATV 'several million dollars', will delve into its audience's age, sex and income and whether they enjoy watching the shows. A new measure called the quality mass index - which incorporates the audience's rating and appreciation of each programme - will be used for future assessments.

Kwong Hoi-ying, ATV's senior vice-president, said it was unreasonable and incomprehensive to use audience rating as the only yardstick against which to measure the worth of a programme. 'The survey will not only measure the number of viewers in front of televisions, but also take into account other media channels such as YouTube, the internet and mobile phones,' Kwong said. He hoped the research would create a new standard for advertisers.

Dr Robert Chung Ting-yiu, director of the HKU programme, said: 'We don't know whether the audience is criticising or praising the fare while watching TV. Whether the audience enjoys the programme is a whole new area [of study].'

A telephone poll of 1,318 people aged nine or above on their television viewing habits was held this month. The results, released yesterday, showed all of them - or 6.14 million people by projection - watched television for at least five minutes over seven days, of which 4.39 million were watching ATV. About 3.77 million watched ATV news broadcasts and 1.77 million watched the 33rd Top 10 Chinese Gold Songs Awards, jointly held with RTHK on January 9. The HKU study, to run for three years, will track 650 participants a week.