Datadory notebook
How Market Researchers Use Broadcasting Data
Market researchers use broadcasting data to benchmark audience reach, size media markets and evidence claims from three free-to-cheap source families: Barb's weekly Top 50 and archive back to January 1992, Ofcom's 471-publication research hub, and the FCC registries covering roughly 30,000-plus US TV facilities. Ten of these 15 primary datasets are free.
1,744 datasets. Pick your catch.
Which datasets anchor UK audience measurement?
BARB Weekly Top 50 Shows and Viewing Data is the Joint Industry Currency view of what Britain actually watched last week: the 50 most-watched programmes across broadcast channels and subscribing SVOD services, ranked with 7-day and 28-day consolidated viewing and device breakdowns. At 50 records per week the current-year file runs roughly 2,600 rows annually, refreshed weekly, and both JSON API and client-side CSV export routes exist so the dashboard never has to be retyped into a workbook.
How far back can you push an audience trend line?
Trend chapters live or die on coverage windows, so state them before promising a decade chart. BARB Main Site - Viewing Data Hub is the decisive record here: four public viewing products plus an archive whose viewing data runs from January 1992 through December 2025, with current weeks from January 2026 onward on an As Viewed basis. That is 34 years of programme-level history from a single publisher - long enough to plot the multichannel era, the SVOD shift and consolidation events on one axis.
Ofcom stretches the frame sideways rather than back: its open-data series mostly span 2005-2026, the Technology Tracker runs 2011-2021, complaints data covers 2014 Q1 to 2021 Q1, and Media Nations and the Communications Market Report have appeared annually since 2004. European comparisons come from the EBU Media Intelligence Service, whose PSM Datasets cover more than 60 broadcasting organisations alongside roughly 40 reports a year; radio trend series cite five-year ranges, so treat cross-country PSM work as a snapshot layer rather than a longitudinal one. The table below is the version worth pasting into your scoping memo.
How do you size market structure without buying a panel?
For emerging-market demand chapters, India MoSPI carries the household side: a CPI indicator API exposing 1,307,708 rows, roughly 4,566 published tables across 30 products in the e-Sankhyiki catalogue, and 187 microdata studies including HCES consumption surveys for 2022-23 and 2023-24 that break down by state - the income-and-spending denominators behind any Indian media-consumption forecast. Reproduction follows the GSDD 2026 guidelines with mandatory source acknowledgement.
Can you measure news exposure without a monitoring contract?
Yes, at least for the evidencing stage. Internet Archive TV News Archive holds approximately 4.37 million US and international news broadcasts dated from March 2001 to the present, ingested continuously and searchable at closed-caption text level. Metadata and captions return as JSON through an API, clips stream free, and full broadcasts run through a borrowing model - so a client asking 'how much airtime did our category get last quarter' can be answered with a caption-term time series before anyone signs a media-monitoring renewal. Two caveats belong in the methods note: underlying video remains copyrighted by originating broadcasters, and the archive skews to US national and local news, with earliest holdings concentrated in San Francisco, Washington DC, Philadelphia and Boston stations.
How do you assemble a broadcasting deck in a week?
A working sequence that avoids subscriptions entirely:
Pick up where this leaves off
Every one of these ships with sample rows before you commit to anything.
BARB Weekly Top 50 Shows and Viewing Data
week · Broadcaster · mbid …+3 more
Ofcom Research and Data - Broadcasting and Media
UK National Data Library / Find Open Data (data.gov.uk)
title · notes · metadata_created …+11 more
BARB Main Site - Viewing Data Hub Data
EBU Media Intelligence Service
organisation_name · country · metric_group …+5 more
FCC TV Query System (LMS / CDBS TV Station Database)
13 verified core fields · ATSC 3.0 flags · ASRN numbers …+10 more
Want rows instead of a pitch? Name the datasets.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Get a sampleQuestions worth asking
Where do I find European public service media audience statistics?
The EBU Media Intelligence Service publishes roughly 40 reports a year plus PSM Datasets covering more than 60 broadcasting organisations across Europe, spanning television reach, radio listening and Eurovision audience trends. Full access is members-only; shortened versions of selected reports are public, and non-members can enquire at intelligence@ebu.ch.
How many US TV stations does the FCC registry cover?
Roughly 30,000-plus TV facility records across DTV, Class A, DTS and LPT services sit in the FCC TV Query System, refreshed daily and exportable as pipe-delimited text. It also lists pending applications, construction permits and STAs, plus Canadian and Mexican border-zone records, making it the free denominator for US local-TV market sizing.