Charging Usage on Television Commercials:

TV commercials advertise commercial products in advert-breaks. All usage calculations are done via the usefee.tv website.

The fee quoted in the table above is for the session fee (or basic studio Fee - BSF), per hour of your time.

The audience for commercial slots (and therefore the usage fee) is calculated using TVR's (TeleVision Ratings). There are Network and Regional TVR's.

1 Network TVR = 1% of the adult viewing audience of the UK, which is 49M viewers, so 1 Network TVR equates to 490,000 viewers. The entire network is comprised of 14 regions.

1 Regional TVR = 1% of the adult viewing audience of each individual region, and so are 'worth less' than network TVR's. Then, because the audience sizes in each region are different, 1 Regional TVR for Region A is not the same value as 1 Regional TVR for Region B - so these must be calculated separately.

All usage fees are calculated using the usefee.tv website.

Working out Usage - National TVR's

When quoting for work, always find out the TVR number from the hirer. The hirer will have this figure as they can't buy the slot without it. Note that many hirers pretend not to have this information....

If, however, the hirer is prospectively creating the commercial, than you can still quote for the work. Your quote should be your "Basic Studio Fee, plus the standard usage fee (calculated with the known network or regional TVR's for this commercial when they become available), calculated by the usefee.tv website, including the one-off transmission fee equivalent to the Basic Studio Fee".

When you calculate the usage fee on usefee.tv, a one-off transmission fee is included within the calculation, which is equivalent to your basic studio fee.

(Note that the Sky channel is considered a Network channel, as well as the existing terrestrial channels.)

Working Out Usage - Regional TVR's (Just One Region)

If the commercial is only being broadcast in one regional area, simply use the usefee.tv website to work out the usage fee. This calculated fee will include your one-time transmission fee, equivalent to your basic studio fee.

Working Out Usage - Regional TVR's (Multiple Regions)

A Warning about Usefee.tv: The website works in all respects for it's usage calculations, unless you are trying to work out the usage for multiple regions.

The website will actually allow you to work calculate multiple regions at once and select, e.g. 100 regional TVR's in more than one region, but it presumes that you then mean 100 regional TVR's in each of these regions, i.e. 100 in region A and 100 in region B.

Cast Study 1 - exactly the same # TVR's for each region.

You have 100 regional TVR's in Midlands and 100 regional TVR's in London.

This is simple - just use the usefee.tv site, add in your TVR number (in this case, it's 100, not 200), and then select which regions your commercial will be broadcast in. Your one-time transmission fee equivalent to your basic studio fee will be included in the calculation

Case Study 2 - different # TVR's for each region.

You have 25 regional TVR's for the Midland region, 75 TVR's for the London region and 13 TVR's for the Yorkshire region.

You must perform the first calculation pass with your basic studio fee, 25 regional TVR's and select only the Midland region. This will include the one-off transmission fee equivalent to your basic studio fee.

You must then perform the second calculation pass with your basic studio fee, 75 regional TVR's and only select the London region. The issue now is that this resulting usage calculation also includes a one-off transmission fee, and we can only have one - so you need to manually subtract your basic studio fee from the result.

You then perform the third calculation pass with your basic studio fee, 13 regional TVR's and only select the Yorkshire region. This also has a one-off transmission fee and this also needs to be subtracted from the result.

You then add the 3 final calculation results together to create your overall usage fee, which includes just one, one-off transmission fee.



Working Out Usage - Impressions



In some cases on smaller channels, satellite, cable or internet channels, TVR's are not given, and 'Impressions' are given instead.

You can work out how many TVR's are calculated (backwards) from the above calculation, and then round that number up. For example, 1 TVR = 490k viewers, and if the number of impressions was 390,000, this would equate to 1 TVR.

The calculation is: Number of impressions divided by 490,000, and rounded up to the nearest whole number. This is confirmed by Equity.

You then use this figure as a Network TVR and calculate your usage based on the methods above.

Most agents simplify the process by charging the client a session fee AND 200% of the session fee per 3 month block of use on each video on demand channel.

Working Out Usage - International

The usefee.tv site has a guide to the buyout for each country, including the US/Canada on a separate tab at the top.

Simply enter your BSF, choose which countries your commercial will be broadcast in, and it will calculate your usage.

Working Out Usage - New Vs Re-Runs

There is a different calculation for new broadcasts vs re-runs. It's important therefore to keep a track of your TVR's through your quotation and invoicing systems, so you can quote and invoice for future re-runs of the campaign in the future.

More info on TVR's and Usefee.tv