Like the mercury during a cold snap, viewership of the Weather Network suddenly began to plummet this fall. Almost immediately, executives at the cable channel began scratching their heads.
Why would a broadcaster that has for 21 years enjoyed a loyal audience base suddenly lose 10 per cent of its viewers? Were Canadians suddenly less concerned with their daily forecast? Not exactly.
A new method for tracking TV ratings has shaken up the television sector, resulting in significant swings in audience numbers. Randomly selected viewers now carry pager-like devices on their hips, which silently track what shows they watch by listening for audio signals embedded in each channel's programming. At the end of the day, the pagers transmit the data back to BBM Canada in Toronto, which tabulates the ratings.
This new system has resulted in clear winners and losers - and since advertising rates are pegged to ratings, the stakes are high.
"A multibillion-dollar industry hinges on this particular change," said Pierre Morrissette, chief executive officer of the Weather Network's parent company, Pelmorex Media Inc.
The technology replaces the old system of boxes installed on the tops of TV sets in sample homes, and it has dramatically altered Canada's TV-watching figures.
In less than two months, viewership of cable channels is up 30 per cent and audiences for the bigger conventional networks has jumped 20 per cent.
"It's counting audiences that the old system wasn't," says Jim MacLeod, chief executive officer at BBM.
Because the pagers isolate the viewing habits of each member of a household that agrees to take part in BBM's surveys, they can better tell if four people are watching a particular show, instead of just one. More important, the pagers also travel with the viewer outside the home, capturing TV watched in bars or at a friend's house.
Among the benefactors, Teletoon is enjoying record ratings, since the pagers are better able to track when mothers watch cartoons with their children. Children, who were less likely to press the button on their ratings box, now simply have to have the pager with them to be counted. The number of children watching Teletoon is up 61 per cent this fall, while women have climbed a seemingly impossible 232 per cent.
"Consistently we get feedback from parents telling us that they spend time watching TV with their kids," said John Lanthier, Teletoon's director of sales. "That has a whole whack of implications for advertisers, but it never really showed up in the audience numbers. Now we're seeing it show up."
On the other end of the spectrum is the Weather Network, where Mr. Morrissette suspects the new technology is hurting his numbers. The channel knows its base of viewers usually flip on their broadcast in the morning as they get ready for work, but may be in the next room listening to the forecast, or only catching snippets of the updates. If the pager is not close enough to hear the embedded audio signal, those viewers aren't counted. The old boxes would have recorded the channel as being watched.
The channel is now investigating whether it needs to boost the power of the embedded signal on its channel. "It's worth evaluating. There have been a lot of swings in various directions. Is it technical? Is it real?" Mr. Morrissette said.
Other trends have emerged. Prime-time viewership is up at both CTV and Global on many top shows. Medical dramas House and Grey's Anatomy , for example, are now seeing audiences well over three million viewers each week nationally, exceeding last year's numbers by more than 20 per cent in some cases. When House made its debut this season, BBM said the show drew 4.4 million viewers. Audience numbers of that size have not been seen in years.
"We've definitely seen a lift across our prime time averages," said Kathy Gardner, senior vice-president of strategic insight at CanWest Global Communications Corp., which owns Global.
If there are two people on a couch watching a show, the pagers are better at tracking that, while the old boxes needed viewers to press a button if another person walked in the room.
Late-night viewing has seen a slight drop in viewers, which BBM attributes to people charging their pagers at night, during which time the devices cannot track what's being watched.
Sports has emerged as a big winner. Canada's three biggest sports networks - TSN, Rogers Sportsnet and The Score - have each seen ratings jumps of about 50 per cent.
John Levy, CEO of Score Media, believes this is because the pagers are better at counting groups of people at home or in bars where the audio signal is loud enough to be detected.
BBM estimates out-of-home viewing has pushed TV ratings up by 12 per cent.
"In addition to being more accurate, we're getting out-of-home viewing in these ratings," Mr. Levy said, adding that The Score is now boosting its prices for ads during events such as basketball and English Premiere League soccer.
"It has allowed us to vary our rates a little bit. We did take them up as a result," he said.
Similarly, Vision TV, a specialty channel that courts older audiences but has long been considered on the fringe of the ratings, has seen its prime-time audiences double to 120,000 people this year when it runs movies and reruns of Murder, She Wrote .
"That sounds small if you are a CBC or a CTV, but for us that's a lot," said Bill Roberts, president of Vision, who said the channel will now push to boost ad revenue. "I sat down with our sales and marketing people and was very direct. We are going to be meeting with our advertising partners doing our very best to convey the message of increased audience and ratings."
But advertisers and some broadcasters are taking a cautious approach to the new data.
"Viewing hasn't changed. Capturing viewing is what's changed," said Sunni Boot, CEO of advertising company ZenithOptimedia. "The issue then becomes, are we paying more because they are recording more viewers? This is what advertisers obviously want to know. And the answer is no. Our investment is going to be exactly the same."
Ms. Boot points out that even though audience numbers are larger now, the ranking of top shows on TV has remained similar to last year, with House, Grey's Anatomy and Survivor atop the ratings.
For its part, CTV is also waiting to see more than a month's worth of data before it determines whether it has benefited from the change. "The new BBM panel is very fresh. In these early days of the new system, we would not want to draw conclusions about the impact on particular programs," CTV spokeswoman Bonnie Brownlee said.
Grant Robertson