Methodology Centre
Open, explainable formulas, source weighting rules, and mathematical models powering all rankings and insights.
The Transparency Invariant
Every score, ranking position, and carriage status generated by TV & FM Insights is explainable and reproducible. No secret boosts, pay-to-play promotions, or opaque black boxes. When methodologies or saturation curves are updated, active versions advance deterministically (e.g. ranking@1, ranking_reach_weighted@1).
Ranking Score
ranking_score@2
Composite channel/station rank score from weighted curated signals.
Ranking Reach Weighted
ranking_reach_weighted@2
Composite discoverability score combining attention signals with verified carriage footprint breadth.
Carriage & Lineup Auditing Standards
1. Autonomous Evidence-Gated Promotion
Carriers discovered via public web scrapers start as provisional (verified=False). They are promoted to authoritative only when meeting statutory broadcast licensing criteria, matching official domains, or achieving multi-source corroboration ($N \ge 3$).
2. Stateful N=3 Miss Deactivation
To protect against temporary web outages, transient scrape misses do not drop channels immediately. Only when a channel is absent across $N=3$ consecutive verified crawl observations is carriage_terminated emitted.
3. Guarded Stream Probing
Live HLS and audio streams are probed in background batches enforcing hop-by-hop SSRF validation with follow_redirects=False and capped at $\le 1\,\text{KB}$ reads to protect memory and prevent infinite streaming hangs.
4. Reach vs. Distribution Separation
Audience attention reach remains pure and untainted by carriage footprint. Platforms footprint is scored separately in the opt-in reach_weighted discoverability profile, preserving canonical ranking integrity.
Ranked parameters
Buzz buzz
Volume of attributed coverage and mentions, weighted by source and recency, saturating towards 100.
Data source: Attributed curated items (news, social and editorial coverage) from active sources in the window.
Sentiment sentiment
Source-weighted mean tone of the scored coverage, mapped so 50 is neutral.
Data source: Curated items that carry a sentiment score from the sentiment worker.
Reach reach
Log-scaled audience reach reported alongside coverage, weighted by source and recency.
Data source: Curated items that report a reach figure (for example structured ratings imports).
Engagement engagement
Log-scaled interactions (likes, shares, comments) on attributed coverage.
Data source: Curated items that report an engagement figure.
Schedule schedule
Richness of the channel's upcoming programme schedule, weighted by the schedule source.
Data source: Upcoming schedule entries (EPG) for the channel.
Demand demand
First-party viewer demand (searches, tune-ins, reminders), recency-weighted.
Data source: Daily first-party demand rollups (weighted where available, raw counts otherwise).
Distribution distribution
Breadth of verified carriage across active distribution platforms; availability, not audience.
Data source: Active carriage rows on active, verified platforms.
