Media Studies: Part 1 : RAJAB and BARB

Target Audience

TASK 1:

RAJAR, which stands for Radio Joint Audience Research Limited, was started in 1992 and is owned by CRCA (Commercial Radio Companies Association). This company provides an official service to the radio industry measuring radio audiences in the UK. There are currently approximately 310 individual stations on the survey including 55 BBC stations and results are published every quarter. This company is also partly owned by the BBC and the Radio Centre, on behalf of the commercial sector making it a deadlock company, which means that they need both board parties to agree to decisions which will affect the company. The UK radio map is very complex, so RAJAR interviews around 11,000 adults, aged over 15, and 4,000 children between the ages of 4 -14 over 50 weeks. The survey operates as a sweep, not a panel, which means that participants are asked to participate for one week. They complete a diary which shows the stations they have listened to for a minimum of 5 minutes.

BARB (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board) is the organisation responsible for providing the official measurement of UK television audiences. BARB is a private company and they are not owned by a large corporation. Their main media producer is television and they work for BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channels 4 and 5. The main purpose of both of these companies is to target demographic groups within audiences and then to find out as much relevant and useful information about them as possible. 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. 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. The panel is selected to be representative of each ITV and BBC region, with pre-determined sample sizes. Each home represents, on average, about 5,000 of the UK population.

These two agency companies are non-profitable companies and they are funded by some of the big companies such as the BBC, Channel 4, ITV1 and Channel, 5 on a contract basis. This works well for both the agency companies and their clients. The large media companies get access to useful information and research that helps them to produce good television programmes and the research agencies, by providing an invaluable service/offering to these big companies, are able to ensure that they get the funding they require. Research information is so important when it comes to producing media products, because of the huge financial risks involved. For example, if a programme is a major ‘flop’, then this may cause a large financial loss, job redundancies and may even damage the company’s reputation for producing first class programmes.

These research agencies collect audience figures and facts to help increase viewing figures, because this information can help the programmes’ media producers to understand and target specific groups of people by such things as age, gender, interests and even by background. Also, they are able to understand and control such things as when the programme should be shown, at what time, on what day and even for how long. This all helps to increase the potential viewing figures as well as encourage viewer loyalty, channel viewing time and even advertising time and revenues. It is very beneficial for media producers as it can help them reduce revenue losses and can increase profits for their programmes, which is increasingly important today especially for the BBC, who are facing large cuts in license fees and all media companies that are facing increased competition and tighter budgets.

It is interesting to compare the radio and television agencies, such as BARB and RAJAR, to a different media research agency that works in a different sector, such as NMA, which is a newspaper research agency. NMA deals with the majority of the UK based newspapers, such as The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail as well as many other UK newspapers. For example, the TV and Radio research agencies look to provide quantitative research, because it is more relevant to get general viewing statistics for their shows, rather than getting detailed and specific information. However, NMA tend to carry out qualitative research, because the information would provide them with more detail on ideas and opinions on the newspaper and they can then use this information to make advertising more effective in these particular newspapers.

Increased advertising created by higher viewing figures is incredibly important for media companies. An example of this is ITV who have had a 45% rise in profits, partly due to programmes like the X Factor show, which is populist programme shown at key viewing times. The additional money raised by these types of shows has allowed them to invest £25 million in online services, which allows them to compete in this new space. Media Producers also can receive critical acclaim for creating new and different populist television that the information from the research agencies helps to make. In the past, TV Awards have honoured the producers of populist programmes such as Big Brother, Who wants to be a Millionaire and Ground Force.

The possible downside to media producers and to media companies is that they are constantly under pressure to produce populist television and radio, rather than quality programmes that may not always appeal to the mainstream. The research agencies viewing figures can push media companies to produce more and more programmes of the same type, rather than producing a rich variety of programmes that could ultimately offer more to the consumer in terms of education and real insight into the world we live in.

Consumers can benefit from the research agencies, because it insures that media producers are developing and creating relevant programmes for their audience. It also makes the programmes that are more popular and gets the target audience ‘spot on’ for each programme i.e. the right programmes for the right people at the right time.
However, the downside is that the consumer will get more and more of the same type of television and radio, with very little real choice and variety. The consumer is left with just mass media, rather than media that is more intelligent and challenging for them, with a focus on improving and contributing to society. Examples include TV programs about art, or history and recordings of classical and jazz music. Populist media provides entertainment that satisfies consumer "baser" cravings of the consumer culture, such as reality shows, TV, pop music and pornography, but fundamentally could be seen to let the consumer down and could be partly to blame for the consumerist “baser” culture we are seeing in Britain today.

TASK 2:

The best way of finding out quantitative and qualitative research is to hand out questionnaires with relevant questions. This should provide you with valuable information which you can then use to help produce the final product. This is the main source of research which all companies and research agencies have to do. Here is my own example of a questionnaire:

Broadcaster’s audience research board

TV Programme Content Schedule

Age:

8-16 [ ] 17-24 [ ] 25-32 [ ] 33-40 [ ] 41-48 [ ] 49+[ ]