Ratings Information

For 2010 ratings information including top programs and viewing share please click here.

Australia’s television ratings provide advertisers with the ability to analyse who is viewing what and when on a daily basis. In fact, it is one of the most sophisticated ratings systems in the world; reliable, independent and transparent. It is what makes Free TV a truly accountable and quantifiable medium.

Ratings Databases

In Australia, there are three main panels/databases:  

1.  The Metro Panel
OzTAM is the official source of metropolitan television ratings data for the five mainland capital cities – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. These ratings are drawn from the metropolitan panel which is comprised of a representative sample of homes. The panel also incorporates a representative number of pay television homes.

2.  The National Subscription Panel
OzTAM also measures pay TV viewing via a specific national subscription TV database. This is not a representative sample of the general population as it only includes homes with pay television. The pay TV database is drawn from both metro and regional areas; therefore comparisons of figures from the national pay TV database with figures from the metro or regional database are invalid.

3. The Regional Panel 
RegionalTAM is the official source for regional television ratings. It covers five aggregated regional markets - Queensland, Northern NSW, Southern NSW, Victoria and Tasmania.   Diary markets are those covering the rest of regional and remote Australia including SA and NT. At this stage, the diary markets utilise conventional paper diaries and do not use people-meters to collect ratings data.  

How Ratings Are Compiled