Seven West Media’s CEO and managing James Warburton wants to see the overnight OzTAM ratings system scrapped, given it is largely redundant in the era of catch-up viewing.

He made these comments at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia presentation.

“For 22 years, the industry has owned and published the OzTAM ratings data daily,” he said.

“It’s been robust and world best practice. But, for 22 years, we’ve shown our decline year after year after year. So, despite the changes to viewing and the inclusion of digital, as an industry we’ve been complacent and continued to do the same thing.

“At Seven, we’ve been leading the charge on changing the way our audiences are measured and reported. The industry’s new measurement platform, called Virtual Oz or VOZ, will report true viewing numbers for our content from the start of calendar year 2023.

“The challenge I put to my TV peers is, let’s get rid of overnights, even for just a month, and start to tell the real story. That’s what happens in the UK and the US where they focus on three days and seven days.”

Warburton used his own network’s viewing figures as an example, explaining that in the overnight ratings, Seven reaches over 14 million viewers.

“That grows 21 per cent four days later and another 29 per cent in 28 days.

“Now, given we trade and negotiate and post-analyse campaigns on a 28-day basis, that’s a 57 per cent increase from overnight audience numbers.”