Big Brother finale ratings are twenty-four hours from being lost FOREVER

For the first time ever, Australian TV networks have no idea how many people are watching their programming.

Data firm Nielsen was the subject of a ‘ransomware cyber attack’ the night before last Wednesday’s Big Brother finale and has not reported any TV ratings data since.

On Tuesday, TV Blackbox revealed that the backup data is only stored on in-home ratings boxes for seven days, meaning viewership totals may soon be lost forever.

‘While it is true “that all households are still collecting viewing data”, TV Blackbox can reveal that data is only stored for 7 days,’ the industry website noted.

This means that data from the night of Tuesday, July 21 will be lost forever if Nielsen fails to correct the issue in the next 24 hours.

‘If it stretches into subsequent days more data will go missing including the all-important Big Brother finale data for Channel 7.’

The issue is of major concern to advertising industry, which uses the data to determine where to allocate millions of dollars in revenue.

‘Nielsen has become aware of an unexpected disruption relating to the Australian TV Audience Measurement (TAM) data centre environment. This disruption is derived from a ransomware attack in which Nielsen was the victim,’ a Nielsen rep told the publication. 

The issue is still under investigation and the perpetrator of the data breach remains unknown.    

As a result, it’s unclear whether Channel Seven will ever know how well the Big Brother finale performed.

Other shows impacted include Sunday’s Australian Ninja Warrior premiere on Channel Nine and Bachelor in Paradise on Channel Ten.

On Friday, OzTAM, the company who employs Nielsen to handle ratings data, announced they expected to have the issue resolved by Wednesday.

‘Nielsen’s top priorities are to ensure that the environment is safe and to restore and release the overnight ratings. This will be followed closely by releasing data for missing dates,’ they said.