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one of the few sports left on free tv
Big sports man bigger betting man
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copy and follow my betting at www.betfect.comSteve I wonder if those figures include all the people who record Channel 4 to run on all the adverts during the races and the interviews that drag on forever
Indeed, I’ve had my doubts about the veracity of published viewing figures ever since VCRs were invented; more so now there’s Catch-Up and the iPlayer
I watch BBC News and Parliament live but little else and virtually nothing on the commercial channels, including C4 racing, but excepting the 40 minute chunks of some Rugby World Cup matches when the ball’s actually being chucked around
How do whoever determine viewing figures account for people like me – a substantial number I’d surmise – who relish the opportunity to watch output when I want to rather than when I have to
Any individual audience research figure may be inaccurate up to a certain percentage of error based upon the methods used. That’s why TV executives don’t specifically look at just one set of figures
However, in Channel 4’s case, the numbers are down, down, down – down for all meetings (though the Grand National has held up pretty well, showing what a popular race it is) and down year on year for all of those meetings
The figures for Champions Day are catastrophic. I was no fan of the Beeb’s coverage but what do you expect if you allow your sport to be removed from one of the country’s two main channels?
The introduction of a professional but dull presentation team only added to the decline. The format itself has a few defects, but many people tune in to TV shows to see characters having a bit of fun, with an element of controversy
Unfortunately the current Channel 4 offering has little of that. The rights sellers need to wake up quickly and find a multi-channel response that works, or viewing figures will continue to fallDrone – totally agree with you, the choice of not only how we watch TV programmes but also the variety of other entertainment options that takes us away from the TV compared to years past is like night & day.
I also think that C4 Racing are focusing far too hard with trying to attract new people to the sport and thus alienating their core audience, new technology is all well and good but it is called horse racing and so it would be nice to actually see the horses for more than a few seconds before they start racing.
Brits as a nation are very conservative in nature and therefore way behind other countries (USA & Australia being the best examples) when it comes to self promotion of any kind – you only have to look at the sports pages of any major newspaper to see that racing (Grand National aside) struggles to get even half a page and how often do you see any horse racing headlines on Sky Sports News or BBC Sport News for that matter.
You wouldn’t think that Horse Racing is only beaten by Football as the most attended sport in the country.
The big difference there is the majority of football attendees pay to watch the football, and the majority of racing attendees pay for the social occasion / to get leathered.
It’s a puzzler on all kinds of levels but true.
BUY THE SUN
From the BARB website
“Since 1981, we at the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) have been delivering the official viewing figures for UK television audiences. We commission research companies Ipsos MORI, Kantar Media and RSMB to collect data that represent the viewing behaviour of the UK’s 26 million TV households.
BARB viewing data offer clients, such as broadcasters and advertisers, a minute by minute breakdown of viewing at regional and national levels. This information is vital for assessing how programmes, channels or advertising campaigns have performed and provides the basis for airtime advertising trading.
In order to estimate viewing patterns across all TV households, a carefully selected panel of private homes is recruited. The Establishment Survey is carried out continuously by Ipsos MORI in order to track changes in UK household characteristics. From this we can ascertain the types of households we need on our panel to make sure it is representative of the whole of the UK. We then recruit households to be on the panel that suit the necessary demographics, TV platforms and geography, as well as other variables. The BARB panel consists of 5100 households, which each represent about 5000 other households across the UK.
Once a household has been recruited to the BARB panel, Kantar Media fits every TV set in the home with a meter. Software meters are also installed on laptop and desktop computers, and tablets. In order for the meter to know who is watching, each member of the household over the age of four is assigned a button on a special remote control. If they enter a room while the television is on they must press their designated button to register their presence and press it again when they leave to show they are no longer watching.
We know what panel members are watching through an audio matching process. The meters take an audio sample of the programme, which is then turned into a digital fingerprint and matched to a reference library of programmes. It takes 15 seconds for the audio to be recognised and therefore matched but we report viewing on a minute-by-minute basis.
When two channels are playing the same content, for example one in standard and one in high definition, the broadcaster applies an audio watermark. This is inaudible to the human ear but can be picked up by the meter, allowing it to allocate the data correctly.
We have an additional technique for homes that use Sky, which involves accessing service information codes from the set-top box. We have also started working with metadata tags, which are embedded by broadcasters into online television content.
The data from the panel are sent back to Kantar Media at 2am before being processed and weighted to be representative of the whole of the UK. They are then released to the industry at 9.30am each day. These figures are called ‘overnights’ and show all of the previous day’s TV viewing.
These figures not only include those who watched the programme at the time it was broadcast but also those who recorded it and watched it back the same day. This is referred to as ‘viewing on the same day as live’ or VOSDAL.
Overnights however are not the viewing figures that appear on our website. These are consolidated ratings and include catch-up, or time-shifted, viewing that happened up to seven days after the original broadcast. The consolidated ratings are the BARB gold standard on which the UK broadcasting and advertising industries rely for all reporting and trading.
We are also now able to measure time-shifted viewing that happened up to 28 days later. All of our data is matched to the programme and advertising schedule to give viewing estimates for every programme and commercial that has been broadcast. ”
To be honest I’m not surprised that the calculated viewing figures are down for racing because as many have alluded to there is now so much more you can do with your time, be it watching one of 400 channels,playing on your x-box, spending all day in the pub or doing the many things the modern parent is obliged to do with their offspring. I also don’t think it’s such a surprise that people view it as a social occasion because if you go to a flat meeting you might get about 15-20 minutes of actual sport. In the modern age of doing something with 100% of your time it’s hardly surprising that some fill that time at the bar. Personally speaking I think doing nothing is highly under estimated these days
I never missed terrestrial racing at one time, I either watched live or the recordings later. In the last few years my interest in watching it has dwindled primarily for the following reasons:
1. Lack of pre-race coverage, not enough shots of the horses in the paddock. Oddly Channel 4 often show all the runners in a lesser race on the card but not runners before a Group 1 or Classic. I presume this is because they spend more time on interviews and collages.
2 The flat is dominated by two big operations, Coolmore and Godolphin. Many of the Coolmore horses, being so inbred to Northern Dancer, look identical and they are very lightly raced.
3. The extremely annoying adverts on Channel 4.
4. The ghastly presenters on Channel 4. They are all bad as they are as they don’t work as a team and why do we need so many?
I watched ATR and for all the complaints it’s a much more professional outfit. Just the picture is terrible and they don’t have enough cameras. They do show runners before the races, however they cram too much in and the split screen is more than annoying.
Moan over.
Forgot to add that it will all change when jumping starts, I will watch that but I will pre-record to miss interviews and adverts.
Let’s face it, although I agree TV viewing patterns are changing considerably, the main reason why the Ch4 audience has fallen so far is because it’s boring
It may have faults, but ATR is much more fun, eg Harvey and Weaver on a Friday night. Not everybody’s cup of tea but delivering just the sort of spontaneous entertainment that would liven up the Channel 4 coverage and probably appeal to a wider audience too. Chapman is punchy and controversial and Robert Cooper is a legend once you’ve got the joke
The ironic thing is that Racing For Change, Great British Racing, the rights negotiating team and Channel 4 (IMG) all set out to increase the popularity of the sport
All they’ve managed to do is halve the TV audience in 3 years
It can’t go onYou wouldn’t think that Horse Racing is only beaten by Football as the most attended sport in the country.
This statistic is regularly regurgitated in order to ‘prove’ racing’s popularity but isn’t there something of the damned lie about it?
Given the vast number of race meetings held, thanks to it being the only professional sport with fixtures held virtually every day of the year, it would be a surprise if accumulated attendance wasn’t amongst the highest of all sports
A rather more telling statistic would be the average (mean, median, mode I know not which) attendance per meeting drawn from the hundred or so who turn out at the likes of Lingfield on a cold midweek in February to the 40,000 or so who turn out for the likes of Magnet Cup day at York in high summer
I’d surmise that this average would be substantially lower than that at many familiar sports such as Cricket, Rugby, Tennis, Golf…as well as the obvious Football
Furthermore I’d surmise too that racing has a higher percentage of serial attendees relative to those other sports mentioned, particularly at the midweek gaffs. As we all really know, racing is a sport you either get/love/like or don’t get/hate/dislike with few who can take it or leave it
To be fair, the priority of a lot of race meetings isn’t the attendance, but support for betting turnover. In other sports it’s the spectators
But the long-term attendance figures will to some extent depend upon the Saturday afternoon TV audience and in that respect the figures are disastrous
Allowing the sport to go exclusively to one channel (and one that has a much lower profile than BBC1 and ITV) was a big mistake
But to sack so many characters from the longstanding popular team and replace them with carboard cutouts was even worseThe only reason to watch racing on C4 now is the HD pictures and once RUK and ATR sort that out there will be none. There is too much competition on a Saturday afternoon now , 8 dedicated sports channels whereas there were only 4 tv channels in the entire country.
It’s just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic time, every time something is changed something gets ruined now.
I’ve watched all channels including RUK paid for for many years and am sure the quality has gone down gradually until now.
I think ATR is superb, all their presenters are fun and it’s my fav. whereas RUK and C4 are sadly lacking in many areas and I so agree with a previous poster that C4 seems to think it’s either a fashion show or a documentary at every meeting, Emma has 3 costume changes in 4 hours sometimes.
One guy on RUK who I really rate is David Cleary, he really knows his job but the rest..Nevison, Mellish, Hislop have landed plum jobs from us subscribers somehow, and that’s my 2 Bobsworth (a very good chaser if I remember that far back).
Was it Monica or Michael that trained him ?
Today Racing UK has sacrificed all shots of horses in the paddock by continually showing Dave Nevison in the betting ring… why??
I was a big fan of the old Channel 4 but the current team are just boring and are no fun. Racing UK is decidedly mixed but has certainly gone down in terms of quality. ATR has its faults (the Luke Harvey & Jason Weaver love-in leaves me cold) but has plusses in showing the Sunday Forum and Irish racing.
ITV used to show racing on World of Sport on Saturday afternoons and it’s amazing to think we might be doing back to that, the more things change the more they stay the same!
If only ITV and BBC could make their racing archive from the 70’s and early 80’s available to view, along with all the other programming.
Would be worth paying to watch compared to the dross on TV these days. Seems a shame that there are probably thousands of tapes gathering dust that won’t ever be seen again.
Must be a possible additional income stream if they can find a cheap way of uploading it to a suitable platform.
....and you've got to look a long way back for anything else.
Why Dave Nevison? I find him boring to listen to.
He always looks like he’d rather be somewhere else whilst reading out the monotone obvious changes on the exchanges that anyone interested with a computer can see without his ‘help’.
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