Not dead yet

Thinkbox, the guys responsible for marketing commercial TV in the UK, issued their first Topline Telly report the other day. You can find it here... Download thinkbox_tv_snapshot_2006.ppt 

There's encouraging news in it with respect to TV viewing, but I'm not sure that some of it isn't a little rose-tinted. Because now the times really are a-changing, it's crucial that we understand what is actually happening to the general public's TV consumption. So I thought I'd try to get to the bottom of two of their key findings.

Open up the document and have a look at slide 5, which makes the point that people are being exposed to 3% more commercial impacts in 2006 vs 2005 and 8% vs 2004. This clearly sounds likes good news, but when you move to the next slide it reveals that we're watching slightly less telly than we used to. (Comparing 2006/5 vs 2004.) So the increased impacts could be a function of one or more of the following: maybe people are seeking out the ads they're so enthusaistic about them (and then again...), we could be watching more of the channels that are loaded up with ads, conceivably we're watching at times when there are more ads on air, possibly, even, there are now more ads on TV, or maybe there's some other reason that I can't think of at the moment. Analysis of the BARB panel ought to be able to separate out these different factors.

The next thing that looks encouraging is slide 19. Here we can see data apparently running counter to those I've directed you to before from Richard H. But there are a couple of caveats. First the sample size - as I understand it there are only 130 people on the BARB panel who have a PVR, making the data a little shaky. Second, I don't think the data is longitudinal. In other words, I believe that Thinkbox have drawn attention to the fact that people with PVR's are more likely to be heavy TV viewers (that's why they invested their cash in a TV wactching machine) and are therefore are more likely to be exposed to commercials. Not exactly a break-through finding, and more importantly possibly leading us to conclude that we should be celebrating the arrival of PVR's rather than worrying about them.

Of course I may be wrong, and I hope I am, but I thought I'd send a link to this post to Thinkbox and see what they say.