The release of the fifth metropolitan radio survey of the year will be delayed by one week to August 31 as a result of stricter lockdown restrictions announced by the NSW Government this week.

Industry body Commercial Radio Australia (CRA) said ratings provider GfK had requested additional time to process the data. This comes as a result of a large percentage of GfK’s administration and data processing staff being based in the expanded group of eight Local Government Areas (LGAs) listed as of concern and now subject to harsher lockdown conditions.

“GfK has been impacted by the new rules which restrict travel out of the eight LGAs of concern to authorised essential workers only.  The actual survey work itself is not affected, but a short extension of time is required for processing the results given the challenging circumstances,” CRA chief executive officer Joan Warner said.

“GfK is well prepared with contingency plans already in place but to take into consideration any delays due to the hard lockdowns, CRA agreed to allow a little more time for the processing of the results.” 

The radio ratings involve one of the largest survey samples in Australia behind the Census, with more than 60,000 people surveyed each year.