The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the South African Audience Research Foundation (Saarf) and Nielsen Media Research have signed a new multi-year tripartite agreement on the Television Audience Measurement Survey (Tams).
This deal, signed on 22 May, will run for the next five years, with a tripartite agreement between the three parties running for the duration of 2014. Research conducted by Nielsen will be overseen by the NAB and Saarf throughout this year.
As a result of the NAB’s resignation from Saarf, the Tams contract will continue between the NAB and Nielsen from 2015. Tams will therefore be uninterrupted until the contract term comes to an end in 2019. The parties have introduced key performance indicators (KPIs) into the contract and are confident that the checks and balances put in place by the NAB and Saarf will provide complete transparency regarding the panel’s performance.
Tams is now stable, accurate and reliable, and measures have been put in place in the contract to ensure that it remains so. An annual audit by an international expert will ensure that Tams remains transparent. The new Tams, first released in March 2014, has improved significantly, with problematic weighting inconsistencies and coding errors corrected. The expansion of the panel to 2 500 reporting households, and the implementation of the technology that can measure both analogue and digital broadcast platforms, positions broadcast measurement in South Africa for the future.
