AOB 2: The role of governing bodies

There are several different governing bodies whose job it is to ensure that the T.V and radio stations are doing their job correctly.

BARD
Broadcasters Audience Research Board is owned by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and BSkyB and is responsible for providing these companies with the figures of the UK audience. To do this they have to work out the average audience who have watched all of the programme from the very start to the end of it. This dose not include adverts.

RAJAR
The Radio Joint Audience Research has to measure and profile the audience of the U.K radio stations every three months. To do this they get a sweep who only participate for a week to record in a dairy of what radio stations they listen to for more than 5 minutes.

ABC
The Audit Bureau of Circulation is governed by the media industry and has two main roles; to manage and then uphold the standards which signal the demands of the industry and to ensure that all data and processes meet the requested standard. `The ABC was founded to react to advertisers wishes, when in 1931 they wanted an independent source of circulation data.

ASA
The Advertising Standards Agency make sure that all adverts are liked and can be trusted by the audience. They have to send out clear measures of what is and what is not acceptable content in an advert across a big range of sectors. In their bid to ensure all adverts are legal, decent, honest and truthful to the viewers.

CAVIAR
Created in 1985, the CAVIAR sets out to provide trust-worthy audience records for cinema. It is the result of a sample survey done on around 2500 British cinema goers age between 7-44.

CAP
The Committee of Adverting Practice have over 30 different members which all make sure that the advertising industries are kept legal. They are managed alone by the ASA.