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A Survey of Heritage Television Viewing Figures

Angela Piccini¹ | University of Bristol

Issue 1 — June 2007 | ISSN 1754-8691

1.2 Survey method

The study looked at the whole range of heritage TV (as defined above) over a 12-month period in 2005–06: 162 programme titles on 25 separate TV channels (Archaeology and Heritage in Television, TRP, July 2006). BARB data was used to address the points covered in the project aims. To do this, we took a broad-based approach, running general queries and looking for trends, some of which may merit further analysis.

The following structured the analysis:

1. Where possible, data was to be split by age, social class, gender, region, ethnicity.
2. Where possible, the channels queried were to be those stated in the final programmes list. It was not possible to query all channels as some were not measured by BARB.
3. Data covered the period 1 May 2005 – 30 April 2006.

Audience data

BARB is responsible for providing estimates of the number of people watching television. This includes which channels and programmes are being watched, at what time, and the type of people who are watching at any one time. BARB provides television audience data on a minute-by-minute basis for channels received within the UK.

Viewing estimates are obtained from panels of television-owning households representing the viewing behaviour of the 24+ million households within the UK. The panels are selected to be representative of each ITV and BBC region. The service covers viewing within private households only.

Panel homes are selected via a 'multi-stage, stratified and unclustered' sample design. What this means is that the panel is fully representative of all television households across the whole of the UK. A range of individual and household characteristics (panel controls) are needed to ensure that the panel is fully representative. As estimates for the large majority of panel controls are not available from Census data it is necessary to conduct an Establishment Survey to obtain this information.

Programme data

Titles for this present study were selected from data available via the BUFVC's (British Universities Film and Video Council) TRILT (Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching, www.trilt.ac.uk) database of UK television and radio transmissions. Searches were conducted according to areas of practice (eg, archaeology, architecture, history), chronology (eg, Iron Age, medieval, 18th century), geographical area (eg, Egypt, Rome) and theme (eg, Neanderthals, agriculture, warfare).

Given the large scope of the study and the nature in which the data was extracted from the database, all transmissions of each title on the original list were covered. This included all repeats across all hours. Where a particular series episode was highlighted on the original list, the whole series was only included if it largely fitted within a heritage theme.

Methodological challenges

In the course of the research it was discovered that due to the relatively low viewing numbers, some titles on the list were not found within the BARB viewing data. Similarly, it was not possible to produce statistically significant figures on geographical distribution or on individual viewer behaviour over the course of single transmissions as any extrapolation based on such a small data set is not empirically valid. As such, these findings provide a UK, not an England-wide, analysis. The final section of this report suggests further research activities to address these lacunae.

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