Measuring up

The Guardian reports that Jeremy Hunt wants Ofcom to think of new ways of measuring media consumption, particularly news, suspecting that the rows about protecting media plurality against the expansionist ambitions of News International have not gone away for long.

Generally, media companies like being measured when the outcomes suit their business. In the days before convergence, it was inevitable that different metrics would be used. So we have ABC for newspapers, BARB for tv (except BBC Alba) and RAJAR for radio.  In the world of online, we have ABCe, Nielsen, Comscore, Experian Hitwise and more.  Now, in a multimedia world, some common currency would be really useful.

RAJAR claims a "hit" if you have listened to at least 5 minutes of a station within a 15 minutes period; BARB opts for 3 consecutive minutes. BARB produces some timeshift figures, but the BBC is pushing +7, a figure which totals original broadcasts and iPlayer catch-ups.  Broadcasters are a bit sniffy about ABCe's, but the BBC seems reluctant to publish monthly online figures, except for iPlayer. (The BBC is yet to offer a global tv figure for this year's Royal Wedding - predicted, memorably, at 2 billion). The FT has moved away from ABCe's to an newer concept, Average Global Daily Audience, and is taking a few magazine players with it.

Probably, in terms of measuring the big picture, a single survey covering a rounded picture of each individual's media consumption habits would be the most useful tool.  But you can't see BARB , RAJAR and ABC converging quite yet, when each is really trying to help their core subscribers hang on to the real customers - the advertisers.