Broadcaster's Audience Research Board
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BARB, the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board, is the organisation that compiles television ratings in the UK. It was created to replace a previous system, where the BBC and ITV companies compiled their own ratings. It is owned by the BBC, the ITV companies, Channel 4, five, BSkyB and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. Participating families have a box on top of their TV which tracks the programmes they watch. Currently, BARB have 5,100 homes participating in the survey. The box records exactly what programmes they watch, which is then reported back to the TV stations and the advertisers. BARB numbers are extremely important to TV stations. The trading model that is used by TV companies and advertising agencies depends on the number of people watching the shows. The advertising agency will pay the TV station a certain amount of money based on the number of people watching a show. The BARB numbers are used to work this out. The higher the BARB numbers, the more money a TV station will make. This leads to some interesting situations on the smaller channels. Since there are many TV stations, and many hours in the day, there can be situations where BARB will record zero viewers for certain programmes.
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