BARB is an organization in the UK that measures television audience viewing figures. It was established in 1981 and is jointly owned by major UK broadcasters and television companies. BARB collects data by using devices that record what programs households watch and publish overnight ratings in the morning for TV stations and advertisers. The ratings help TV companies and advertisers understand what shows are popular and what share of the audience they reach.

1. TASK 1-
BARB stands for the Broadcasters Audience Research Board; it is an organisation that
observes audience measurement and television ratings in the United Kingdom. It was
created in 1981 and is jointly owned by the BBC, the TP companies, Channel 4, Channel 5,
BskyB, and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.
BARB collect data by using a box records method where the box records what programmes
a person watches and the panellists indicate who the person in the room watching it is by
pressing a button on a remote control handset. They then collect the data overnight and
publish it as overnight ratings at around 9:30 in the morning for the use of TV stations and
the advertising industry. They then produce final figures for the following week with a
combination of the overnight figures with “time shift” figures.
BARB is useful for Television production companies and schedulers by helping TV companies
and advertisers to see what share of audiences they watch as well as what shows are popular and to
prove a point that the program’s that are on the television are actually being watched. This is also a
easy way to get customers by advertising
This is the top 30 shows for
last week, the top 2 shows that
are the most popular is
EastEnders and Happy Valley
which had had around 8 to 7
million views. Reason being
that soap operas are very
popular for a family household
and do not have a target
audience.

2. This is the top 30 shows in the
year 1998, the top two shows
were both EastEnders which
had over 18 million views.
As you can see from the image of the top 30 shows in 2014 there’s a
variety of TV shows now then there were back then this is because the
audiences now have more options to do and there more choice of
channels
There were more people watching tv back then compared to now as you
can see in 1998, 18.67 million people were watching EastEnders now only
around 8.18 million people are watching it.