When a roof collapses on a house, that’s one thing, but when House goes through the roof, something curious is happening in Canada.
The Hugh Laurie medical drama returned for a sixth season Sept. 21 and drew an astounding 4.4 million viewers on Global, double the series’ average audience last season and by far the highest rating in its history.
That’s more people than were counted watching the Super Bowl, Grey Cup or American Idol finale in Canada last season. The two-hour premiere was a pretty good episode, but that good?
What jacked up House was the brand new way those viewers were counted. As of Aug. 31, the national ratings gathering service BBM Canada has rolled its new Portable People Meter data out right across the country.
Piloted for five years in and around Montreal, the new, improved way of gathering TV and radio ratings–instituted at a cost of between $15 and $20 million–has energized a battered Canadian TV industry desperate for good news.
While ratings for Canadian broadcasters seemed to be trending down the last few seasons, overnight they are higher than ever. The second episode of House drew 3.5 million. Survivor returned to 3.1 million. Grey’s Anatomy stormed back to over 3 million.
Even Canadian specialty networks, like Space and Teletoon, have seen record ratings for season premieres of shows like Stargate Universe and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
“Overall, I think it’s a great story for television,” said Kathy Gardner, senior vice-president, strategic insight at Global’s parent company Canwest.
“We’re capturing viewers we weren’t capturing before. They were always there, we just couldn’t grab them.”
Why all of this matters is that higher audience levels generally lead to higher ad rates, welcome news for broadcasters suffering through one of the worst ad slumps ever.
BBM Canada president and CEO Jim MacLeod said the new PPM data is finding viewers “we were blind to before.” Part of the reason is that the new PPM receptors–a pager-sized device weighing just 75 grams–follow people wherever they are watching TV, including the homes of friends, neighbours or even into restaurants and bars. This outside-the-home viewing is adding about 12% more viewers to the total audience, said MacLeod.
That doesn’t explain all the gains, however. Overall TV ratings are up at least 20% so far this fall. Other factors include a bigger survey panel (4,350 homes, up about 1,000and including around 9,000 individuals), more strategic neighbourhood placement (including a higher emphasis on Canadian cities like Calgary where population growth is more rapid and shifting) and, probably the most important factor, ease of use.
The new PPM ratings are not captured with the aid of a set-top box or anything hooked up to a TV set or VCR. Instead, there is an encoder in each and every radio and television transmission facility in Canada. It emits a code every four seconds into the station’s audio signal. You can’t hear it, said MacLeod, but it is there.
What does hear is the PPM pocket device carried by every member of the family.
It is those family numbers that have likely boosted House this fall. Gardner suggests that show also benefits from its 8 p.m. time slot, an hour when parents and adult children are ready and present.
Under the old People Meter system, each household had a hand set with every family member’s name on the buttons. When viewerswere in front of the TV, theywere supposed to log in.
Not everybody did all the time, said MacLeod.
PPMs aren’t perfect, however. Gardner said her staff has noticed a downturn in late-night viewing that could have something to do with how the PPMs are stored and recharged at night. That’s when the device is stationed in a dock located in a bedroom or somewhere away from TV screens. There the data recorded during the day is downloaded to BBM Canada while the device is recharged.
Viewers in the habit of catching The Tonight Show or The Daily Show from bed at night may have already docked their PPMs for the evening. If the PPMs do not detect any motion from being worn or carried, they automatically shut down after 20 minutes.
There has been an impact on nightly newscasts, too. While CTV and Global’s national newscasts are up–with the surprise being the boost in younger viewers–CBC’s flagship newscast The National is down this fall.
With a re-vamp of The National in the offing for the end of this month, Peter Mansbridge is taking a wait and see attitude.
“It’s a new system, it’s obviously going through some birthing pains because some numbers don’t seem to make sense,” he said.
One other variable is that all programming has to be heard to be recorded by PPMs. Hockey games or other sporting events in bars are only counted if they can be heard, although that hasn’t hurt Hockey Night in Canada, which opened the season with over 2.5 million viewers–over twice last year’s average–for a Toronto-Montreal tilt at the start of the month.
