Media Forum: Should the ABCs change?(Audit Bureau of Circulations)(Organization overview)

Should the ABC give advertisers what they want, Alasdair Reid asks.

Things move slowly in the world of joint industry media research Arguably, this is because the big surveys tend to be run by committee structures that are designed to make the United Nations appear like a model of nimble decision-making. Take the Audit Bureau of Circulations, for instance.

Initially constituted to reflect the best in business models practised in its launch year (1931), the ABC has a chief executive (currently Chris Boyd), but the important strategic and policy stuff is thra-shed out by the ABC Council.

This council has 33 seats, five of which are allocated in perpetuity to trade body organisations. The council meets four times a year and one of its sub-sets, the management committee, meets with similar frequency, while an independent chairman is selected by a panel of Council members every three years.

It's not that easy being the chairman, because the media owner representatives on the Council are alive to the possibility that they're about to be stitched up like kippers by their advertiser and agency co-councillors, or vice-versa.

But now and again, something stirs. In recent years, agencies have been getting ever more vociferous in their demands for greater frequency in reporting periods. They'd like daily figures for newspapers, and monthly ones for magazines. The ABC decision-makers have pondered this, including it, for instance, on the agenda at 'Blue Sky' brainstorming sessions with the survey's various stakeholders.

Then, in April of this year, things sprang into action when the ABC Council commissioned Douglas McArthur, the former chief executive of the Radio Advertising Bureau, to produce a report.