Autumn watch scrubbed ?

[Radio Fixer]

Not surprised personally.  Just got tired of the series.  See Winter is also cut to a week from two.  This is all due to a drop in viewing figures.

My wife asked me how they know viewing figures and I said I believe its by asking a sample audience what they view and calculating from that to the total amount of TV audience.

Is this correct?

thanks Gary

[ppppenguin]

It's always been done by sampling though there is some direct measuement. I think different methods have been used over the years.

https://www.barb.co.uk/about-us/how-we-do-what-we-do/

I can recommend Robert Silvey's book to anyone interested in the history of BBC audience measurement: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780043840016...840019/plp

[PerdioPal]

I am annoyed that the BBC still chase viewing (or listening) figures, I thought the idea of the beeb was to "Inform, Educate and Entertain" let the commercial stations do the mind fog stuff. I bet autumn (winter, spring) watch is pretty cheap to make too.

[radioman]

I've noticed that trailers for programmes say 'On I-player' or for radio, 'ask your Smart Speaker'.
Well, I don't use broadband for viewing TV and I don't own a Smart Speaker.
Last night I noticed that they've changed the background colours on the Freeview radio channels to retina (and screen) burning bright primary coloured text on a black background.... which I think looks awful !
There was nothing wrong with the previous colours - who decided that was an improvement ?
You'd think they were trying to chase away listeners and viewers...
I now have to watch Sky News at 10:30pm for the paper review as the BBC stopped that as well...

Andy

[ppppenguin]

I am annoyed that the BBC still chase viewing (or listening) figures, I thought the idea of the beeb was to "Inform, Educate and Entertain" let the commercial stations do the mind fog stuff.  I bet autumn (winter, spring) watch is pretty cheap to make too.

If the BBC's viewing and listening figures fall too far then it's hard to justify the BBC's existence at all. There are many arguments about what the BBC should and should not do, but I strongly believe that it should cover all areas of entertainment etc. Radio 1 (though I'm not a listener) is every bit as important as Radio 3 and Radio 4.

All other channels have an even greater commercial imperative to have viewers and listeners.

[PerdioPal]

I bet the viewing figures for parliament TV are low, abolish parliament? Joking aside, we need minority programming for all the future engineers/historians/mathematicians etc. not viewing figures and opium for the masses. And don't forget the lack of adverts on the UK BBC. Personally I would pay the TV license just for BBC radio.

[Pye Man]

I used to love all the ‘Watches’ and WFH a lot long before WFH acronym was commonplace would often watch the red button daytime programmes from the production trailer – in fact I rather liked these as they were informative but not slick – a bit OU. At night after the main shows I would watch the Unsprung programme on the red button and the live nest cameras, etc. The daytime broadcasts and Unsprung disappeared and then one year the live cameras were nudged out of the way for repeats of some pop festival.

On top of that the main shows seemed to get Top Gear-ed with more entertainment features – staged competitions between a goshawk and some other bird of prey, etc. – plus the usual worked up dramas along with the inevitable lecturing and virtue signalling that has become a feature of much BBC material.

I am not a great consumer of TV and the Watches provided a good reason for having a licence but I haven’t bothered with the last few seasons’ programmes.

I’m afraid that the BBC seem on a determined path to remove most things that I enjoy. Radios 2, 3 & 4 were for years my day-long companions. I am down to Radio 3 which I don’t use as much as I used to and it will be interesting what happens to its output under the new controller.