Reference library · Media planning
Audience Share (%)
Audience Share is the percentage of everyone watching TV (or any measured medium) at a given moment who are watching a specific channel or program. It is a competitive metric, not a reach metric: the denominator is total viewing in that moment, not the total population.
Formula
Worked example
At 20:00 in a market with a TV universe of 6,000,000 people aged 4+, 2,400,000 are watching television (this is the HUT/PUT base). A given channel has 480,000 viewers in that slot. Audience Share = 480,000 / 2,400,000 x 100 = 20%. That channel holds one-fifth of all viewing in the slot, even though its Rating against the full universe is only 8% (480,000 / 6,000,000).
How it is used
Planners use share to judge a channel's or program's competitive standing within a daypart, and to compare schedule strength against rivals independent of how many people happen to be watching TV at all that hour. The recurring mistake is comparing shares across dayparts or days as if they were on the same base: a 25% share at 09:00 and a 25% share at 21:00 represent very different absolute audiences because the total-viewing denominator (HUT/PUT) moves throughout the day.
The common mistake
Audience Share is not comparable across time periods without checking the underlying total-viewing base, since the same share can mean very different audience volumes.