Tips for Nonratings Research

Nonratings Research

Ratings provide estimates of audience size and composition. Nonratings research provides information about what the audience likes and dislikes analyses of different types of programming, demographic and lifestyle information about the audience, and much more. These data provide decision makers with information they can use to eliminate some of the guess work involved in giving the audience what it wants.

Nonrating research is important to broadcasters in all markets, and one characteristic of all successful broadcast or cable operations is that the management uses research in all types of decision making.

Although audience ratings are the most visible research data used in broadcasting, broadcasters, production companies, advertisers, and broadcast consultants use numerous other methodologies.

Frank Bell, VP/Programming for Keymarket Communications, Inc. says:
Local market research provides something unattainable from inside a radio or TV station: the unvarnished perspective of those wonderful people who actually tune in every week and keep us in business. As a wise man said many years ago, ‘The only reality that counts is that of the audience.”

Some of the nonratings research conducted in the electronic media:
Program Testing
It is now common to taste these products in each state of development: initial idea or plan, rough cut, and postproduction. A variety of research approaches can be used in each stage, depending on the purpose of the study, the amount of time allowed for testing, and the types of decisions that will be made with the results. The researcher must determine that information the decision makers will need to know and must design an analysis to provide that information.

Since major programs and commercials are very expensive to produce, producers and directors are interested in gathering preliminary reactions to a planned project. It would be expensive to spend big sum of money that has no audience appeal.

One basic way to collect preliminary data is to have respondents read a short statement that summarizes a program or commercial and asks them for their opinions about the idea, their willingness to watch the program, or their intent to buy the product based on the4 description. The result may provide an indication of the potential success of a program or commercial.
Examples of Program Testing: rough cuts, storyboards, photomatics, animatics, or executions.
The rough cut is a simplistic production that usually uses amateur actors, little or no editing, and makeshift sets. The other models are photographs, pictures, or drawings of major scenes designed to give the basis idea of a program or commercial to anyone who looks at them.
The tests provide information about the script, characterizations, character relationships, settings, cinematic approach, and overall appeal.

Commercials can also be tested in focus groups, shopping center intercepts, and auditorium-type situations. Commercials are not usually shown of television until they are tested in a variety of situations. The sponsors do not want to communicate the wrong message to the audience.