1 April 2026 · Priya Chandran
Reading BARB and RAJAR beside the CMS
Broadcast currencies and on-site counts answer different questions. Mixing them in one graphic without a caption is how a programme team talks past a digital desk.
BARB estimates who was in reach of a television minute. RAJAR estimates who heard a radio quarter-hour. A CMS counts requests to a page. Treating those as interchangeable “audience” is the fastest way to a bad argument in a mixed newsroom.
When we chart a programme that also publishes a recap article, we keep the currencies on separate pages. The television page carries overnight and consolidated figures with the sample caveats the broadcaster already uses internally. The article page carries completions and returning readers. A third page may show time-of-day overlap: people who watched and later opened the recap, but only if the broadcaster can supply a consented match. We do not infer a match from clocks alone.
Radio is gentler on the eye and harder on the ego. A mid-morning strand can look modest on RAJAR and busy on the on-demand log because the same quarter-hour is being used as catch-up. The chart should say so, in a sentence under the bars, not in a footnote the editor will skip.
PAMCo and ABC still matter for print companions. A magazine that cites “reach” from a website extract while the advertising kit still quotes print readers is running two stories about itself. We put both numbers on facing pages and refuse to average them.
If your licensed files arrive as PDFs with broken tables, budget an extra day. We would rather delay a pack than guess a consolidated rating from a screenshot.