TECHNICAL NOTE DATA COMPARABILITY
INTRODUCTION
1 Historical comparisons are not made for commercial free-to-air broadcasting businesses due to significant changes in the collection methodology since the conduct of the last Television Services Survey in 1999-2000.
2 Estimates for the 1999-2000 survey comprised a combination of directly collected survey data by the ABS on business counts, employment and production activity, while financial estimates were produced using aggregate estimates from another source - the Australian Broadcasting Association (ABA). This methodology changed for the 2002-03 survey. All data were directly collected by the ABS.
3 The change in methodology results in a change in statistical units. The ABS statistical unit used for the 2002-03 survey was the Type of Activity Unit (TAU) (refer paragraph 6 of the Explanatory Notes for more detail). Each business in the ABS collection had at least one licensed television broadcaster. A reconciliation of business units could not be made as ABS only had access to 1999-2000 aggregated financial data from the ABA.
4 Non-sampling error, data item definitions, and treatment of certain business transactions (e.g. inter-company transactions) would also be impacted by the change to methodology. ABS also included more detailed financial items which were not collected by ABA.
5 Readers are cautioned against making comparisons to historical financial data.