Audience Research

BARB

BARB (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board) is the organisation responsible for providing the official measurement of UK television audiences.

BARB is responsible for providing estimates of the number of people watching television. This includes which channels and programmes are being watched, when they are watched and the type of people who are viewing at any one time. Viewing data is collected second-by-second and delivered on a minute-by-minute basis for channels received within the UK. The channel viewed the longest in a clock minute is attributed the viewing of that minute. Viewing at anything other than normal speed (fast forwarding/rewinding live or recorded content) is not reported. The data is available for reporting nationally and at ITV and BBC regional level.

Viewing estimates are obtained from a panel of television owning private homes representing the viewing behaviour of the 26 million TV households within the UK. Each home represents, on average, about 5,000 of the UK population.

A range of individual and household characteristics (panel controls) are deployed to ensure that the panel is representative. The prime control is a 20 cell matrix, made up of means of TV reception, life stage (pre-family, young family, older family, post family and retired), and social grade. As estimates for the large majority of panel controls are not available from Census data it is necessary to conduct an Establishment Survey to obtain this information.

The channel I chose to have my short film on is Film4. I chose this channel as it’s the  most average viewed channel in weekly and monthly. It is best channel for films and they often play low budget movies as well as well known movies. I also believe this is the best channel to aim for my audience because Film4 is a free channel on Freeview so their will be a wider range of households able to preview my film. 

My main target audience will be Males due to the violence, and I will target an older audience because I believe my film is better suited and this will also be hit by showing my film on film4 as they have a much older audience due to the fact they play modern and dated movies.