If I’m understanding correctly, values were listed as a percentage of the market population for each market and averaged together to receive the national listing?
For example,
If Market A had a population of 1,000,000 and 150,000 watched Seven News
and Market B had a population of 3,000,000 and 250,000 watched Seven News
The “Rating” for Market A would be 15.0 and the Rating for Market B would be 8.3, leaving the National rating for the 2 markets as 11.7?
Not sure exactly what each ratings point represented. But it was relative to market size
So if Blue Heelers did the following ratings:
SYDNEY 22
MELBOURNE 27
BRISBANE 16
PERTH 19
ADELAIDE 29
You could rank blue Heelers in order of popularity in each city by saying it was most watched (relative to market size) in ADL then MEL, SYD, PER, BNE. So even though ADL was the smallest market you could easily see how it performed relative to other markets
Nowadays the system would show
SYDNEY 450,000
MELBOURNE 500,000
BRISBANE 200,000
PERTH 190,000
ADELAIDE 175,000
So one might look at that and say it’s most popular in Melbourne and least popular in Adelaide. When actually adelaides 175k relative to market size means that that city is actually blue Heelers best performing market
We can’t compare now as we use total people.
Under ratings you could compare each city and each show. It was relative to the amount of people watching TV at that time and the city population
I agree it’s probably easier comparison from the perspective of a TV network (or TV nerds like us), but when you’re selling timeslots to advertisers, they’d most likely want to know exactly how many eyeballs their ad will reach. Hence the fairly logical shift to the current system
Interestingly of course radio still maintains percentage shares in the ratings figures it publishes each survey, but of course these are a share amongst all stations rather than a portion of the total listening market, so that’s probably different again
Did the change (at least in its entirety) to viewership from audience shares occur after ratings were handed over to Oztam? Me thinks it might have been the networks that decided to shift metrics.
I had forgotten that even though Henderson in Sydney and Naylor in Melbourne consistently won the news ratings by healthy margins at that time, the 6pm lead in was still considered important enough to invest in. I suppose the scare Nine got from the flow on effect Perfect Match had on Ten News ratings in the mid '80s was cause enough for them to spend millions securing the services of Jo Pearson, Terry Willesee and Rob Gell from their rivals for Live at 5.
Had a look at an old episode of Press Your Luck on America’s Game Show Network and remembered why I had fond memories of the version Ian Turpie fronted on Seven for a short time.
Another indication of how times have changed is the importance the movie ratings had. There was always a level of prestige associated with having the biggest movie scheduled for Sunday night at 8.30pm.
It was a one hour, national news and information show hosted by Jo Pearson, poached from top rating Ten News Melbourne, and Terry Willesee who had been hosting Terry Willesee Tonight on Seven in Sydney. It was similar in format to Today with news and weather on the half hour, studio interviews and lifestyle reports. Cricketer Greg Mathews contributed adventure reports.
It didn’t last long- less than a year. The following year it was significantly re-tooled, shortened to 30 minutes and renamed Eye On Australia. They pulled that after a few months, also. While the show failed it had the effect of weakening the opposition. Brian Naylor reclaimed the top news ratings spot in Melbourne.
I often wonder if it would’ve succeeded if Nine had left it to find an audience. The success of Ten News at 5 a few years later demonstrated there was viewer appetite news and information at 5pm.
Yes. It was produced in Sydney although I think Rob Gell did the weather from Melbourne. When the show was re-tooled Willesee presented the show solo in Sydney and I think Jo Pearson may have read the news in Melbourne. Could be wrong on that, though. Someone else may remember. It had been discussed on the old forum from time to time.
I don’t think Nine ever used Jo to read the news in Melbourne. Once Live At 5 flopped she went on to host a Saturday afternoon lifestyle show Body & Soul, which also flopped. I think she was given a very low profile after that. I think the technical term is “warehousing” where they paid her a lot to do very little but to keep away from Channel Ten. (refer also Exhibit B: Greg Evans)
After a couple of years Nine quietly let Jo go out of contract and she went back to Channel Ten but by then Ten News was well past being the ratings threat it once was.
Likewise, Greg Evans was also let go by Nine after Ten’s huge downfall, and he went back to host Perfect Match that Nine had pinched him from in the first place.
that could be right. I don’t recall Eye On Australia all that well.
But gosh all the media hype about Live At 5.… and then Channel 10 stole their thunder by putting up 25 year old re-runs of The Munsters and it rated just as well. (and then The Comedy Company took the p*** out of both shows by having “Dead At 5” hosted by Herman Munster!)
I think Live At 5 was based loosely on the American show Eye On LA… hence the later title Eye On Australia.
And all the fuss when Jo and Rob left Channel 9. Although it was later reported that both had signalled to Ten that their contracts were coming to a close and their intention was to look at other options… but Ten had assumed (incorrectly) that they had been talking to Seven (whose news was rating zero at the time and Christopher Skase had just bought the network). They didn’t anticipate them going to Nine at all apparently.
There was also lots of talk about Jo and Rob being a “million dollar couple” but they always denied that figure. They later admitted that Nine had released the announcement of their signing before they had actually signed anything, and negotiations had essentially stalled…and now Ten knew what was going on. So the pair were potentially going to be left going nowhere. (Note some correction in post further below)
I don’t believe Ten gave them any sort of on-air send off, either. I think they were given immediate marching orders once the Nine announcement came out. I remember The Sun newspaper’s front page the next day had a paparazzi shot of the pair driving out from the Nunawading studios.
Trying to convert those percentages to something equivalent today is very difficult. The AC Nielsen ratings system was based on households as opposed today’s ratings that are based on people. So AFAIK those percentages represent the share of the total households in the viewing area watching. (The actual number of people watching was extrapolated from the known number of people in each household.)
OzTAM does and has always produced a similar number called TARP (Target Audience Rating Point) but instead of percentage of households watching it percentage of people watching.
According to OzTAM’s website "‘TARP (Target Audience Rating Point)’ refers to the average number of people who were watching a specific program or time band expressed as a percentage of the potential viewing audience… "
Another useful stat that OzTAM provides is “Share” ie the percentage of people who are watching TV who are watching a particular program.
I was unaware of the details about how they ended up leaving Ten. They weren’t well known in Sydney and the media reports here tended to focus on Willesee leaving Seven. I can understand how it would’ve been big news in Melbourne seeing as they were two of the faces of the number one news bulletin.
Perhaps this is why the venture failed- Pearson and Gell were unknowns to Sydney viewers and Terry Willesee was better known in Melbourne for being Mike’s brother than for his accomplishments at the helm of a nightly current affairs show.
1988 Ten News was still Dominating Melbourne’s TV Ratings, However the Following Year it started to Lose Viewers to Brian Naylor on Nine and Then Jennifer Keyte on Seven moved to 6:00 which was Disastorous for Ten with Financial Troubles as a Network becoming Reality and Network Ten was Relaunched as The Unloved 10 TV Australia which Looked Pale and Unwatchable.
Melbournians mostly only knew Terry Willesee from the brief run of Terry Willesee Tonight in Melbourne during 1987, when it was handed a news lead-in rating of zero*. And given that his show had bumped off a local show (Day By Day) like Seven News at the time, he probably wasn’t all too popular in Melbourne.
(* It should be pointed out that as the year 1987 went on Seven’s news ratings did climb ever so slightly, to some 6s and 7s instead of zeros and ones. Despite everything that was going on around it, Seven News and newsreader Greg Pearce were getting some positive reviews. But despite the positives Seven thought it was best for Greg to go at the end of the year as it sought to do a complete news revamp in 1988)
Am I right in thinking Jo Pearson replaced Tracey Curro on Ten News? I know Tracey ended up at Seven on Beyond 2000 and then 60 Minutes, but what were the circumstances surrounding her departure from Ten?
Tracey Curro exited Ten during 1990 and I don’t think it was a very pleasant separation, either. I think she was keen to get out of Ten to go to Beyond 2000 (then on Channel 7) but there was some legal business around it. I think Ten had ushered her out of the news desk well before the year was out while the Beyond 2000 business was going on, and just had David Johnston and Mal Walden reading the news, but then Ten had all its financial dramas and Ten News was abruptly cut to 30 minutes with just Johnston as newsreader and Mal left on weekends.
By April 1991, Ten had decided to reinstate the one-hour format and had then got Jo Pearson back to read the news next to David Johnston. Likewise I think Ten had got its 80s golden girl Katrina Lee back in Sydney to read the news next to John Mangos.
Some correction to this post above. It appears that it wasn’t Nine that announced Rob & Jo coming across, but rather it was Derryn Hinch at 3AW who broke the news which was then picked up by the newspapers. And it all came out in the media while negotiations between Nine and Jo & Rob had stalled and nothing had been signed.
This was TV Week’s interview with the couple in mid-1988, just after the launch of Live At 5:
This is a table I made to show some examples of national ratings “household shares” for the few years befor OzTAM started listed chronologically. These are the share numbers that are seen on the screen grabs shown above (except that they are national).
This one shows some selected programs from 2001 to now and includes the top programs of 2016 so far. The share now represents the the number of individuals watching as a percentage of the total population. I haven’t included a lot from the recent year, because members are pretty familiar with the ratings.
