Over the last 10 years, it has been said that TV consumption is decreasing under the development of the Internet around the world. EurodataTV Worldwide, the only database gathering TV ratings from 80 people meter territories worldwide, demonstrates that not a single year has Television seen a decrease of its consumption despite a burning development of Internet usage. On the contrary, Television is even more watched for several reasons which will be shared with the audience.
International radio stations are looking for reasons to broadcast in most eastern European countries after the changes of 1989. Indeed there are now many and contradictory sources of information. Radio stations are numerous. Private stations attract many listeners with their news and various programs. Qualitative and quantitative research approaches in eastern Europe and more especially in Romania helped Radio France Internationale to define its new format.
More than 21 billion of unaddressed printed matter distributed in France in 1995! In Europe, like in France, unaddressed printed matter is a very special advertising support, thanks as much to the amount distributed in letterboxes, as to the market dynamics that it represents. Until recently, unaddressed printed matter had been a media that was certainly very much used by advertisers, but often underrated, and whose audience was not measured at all. How can we master the supply of unaddressed printed matter? How can we measure a number of real contacts between individuals and paper advertisements?
Beginning in 1981 a new facility became available in France : the household audience meter coupled with the Audimat panel system. Each day the viewing figures for the previous 24 hours were made available, precise to the second. And because these measurements were taken automatically, they were bias-free. These measurements, however, only concerned the operation of televisions, without showing who was watching or listening. A system which was already in use in a number of European countries attracted the attention of the various parties concerned. This was the push-button system of audience measurement, which compliments the automatic household viewing measurements through personal declarations of viewing presence in the households concerned. Declarations, made instantaneously by telecommand, identify the individual concerned. However, the professionals were not convinced that this system would be successful in France, believing it to be too constricting and fearing that it would introduce a sampling bias or encourage irregular declarations in the audience behaviour patterns. To answer these doubts in greater depth than by simply examining the experiences of different European countries - which had in fact proved positive- two tests were carried out. Participation in push-button panels for TV audience measurement is today of an very high standard, and together with the extremely representative character of the panels themselves provides audience measurement figures that are very reliable indeed. We now shall describe the requisite methodological steps and their results, essential in France as in all other countries for a fully reliable system.