The paper is divided in two parts. The first part compares the data generated by diaries and people meters in Canada. The comparison shows that both ratings systems generate data that is very similar in terms of general viewing behaviour. For example, there is little difference in per capita hours spent watching TV, either in total or by different age/sex and education groups, and there are only small differences in TV usage by day or daypart However, substantial differences were found in the viewing level of cable versus non-cable subscribers and in the audience to various station groups. The second part of the article compares the ratings information produced by the two methods at the program level and introduces the telephone coincidental as a third measure of the audience of a program. While the telephone coincidental tends to reproduce the audience size estimates of the people meter, it confirms the diaries with respect to composition of the audience.
The original contracts between AGB McNair and the broadcaster subscribers, TVNZ and TV3, called for the New Zealand PeopleMeter Panel to be replaced after two years of operation (i.e. in May 1992). The rationale for this clause in the contracts was the concern which emerged in 1988 and 1989 over the method of operation of the Nielsen peoplemeter service in the US. This concern was heightened by the publication of the CONTAM -1989 report, which was critical of many aspects of the operation of the US service. In respect of the issue of the "age" of panel members (i.e. the length of time they had been on the panel) the report produced evidence to show that as the "age" of panel members increased there is a slight tendency towards lower recorded levels of viewing. The effects were most marked amongst guests and women 18-34. The release of this report gave rise to a great deal of debate in the USA, especially as the report was followed, in early 1990 with major reductions in reported levels of viewing to the three national networks in the USA. This debate included calls for the Nielsen panel to be rotated slowly over a two year period, rather than one year (Cook 1989). In placing the clause in the New Zealand contract which stipulated a complete and forced turnover of the panel after two years of operation, little thought was given to the practicalities of that provision or the impact such a policy may have on the audience data delivered by the service. This paper reviews the evidence for the 'purposive' or forced rotation of PeopleMeter Panelists and presents recommendations on rotation strategies that are based on a series of simulations of the future composition of the panel.
This paper will report on findings from an experimental study, commissioned by the Independent Television Commission (ITC), which explored a number of techniques for assessing audience satisfaction with television in terms of the perceived quality and enjoyment of programmes watched. The study formed part of an ongoing programme of research to design a cost effective measure of audience satisfaction. The paper also examines relationships among four different diary measures of audience reaction (quality, enjoyment, memorability of programme seen and amount of programmes watched), between the aggregated programme genre measures derived from the diary and global programme genre measures derived from the questionnaires, variations among viewers in their atomic and global qualitative ratings and relationships between audience reaction indices and viewing behaviour. The paper will report on the detailed programmes findings in terms of how quality and enjoyment perceptions in the UK vary by programme genre, and by actual programme within programme genre. These findings will also be related to respondent type defined in both demographic and psychographic terms. Finally, relationships between audience reaction indices and aspects of viewing behaviour will be explored, in particular audience size and programme choice.
The broadcasting industries in South East Asia are showing the same fast development as the economies. Both in methodological and data delivery terms, many of the markets have the same facilities as markets in Europe and North America. Although not all markets have peoplemeters, data is available through continuous reporting diary panels, which offer many of the data advantages of peoplemeters. Data from these panels shows a high level of consistency, and the panels do not exhibit any distortions due to the twin "bugbears" of panel research- fatigue and bias. In addition to methodology innovations, the South East Asian countries also enjoy a high degree of data harmonisation through the use of common software for data analysis. With increasing attention being paid to regional media, and with pan- national broadcasting by direct satellite already a reality. South East Asia is well prepared for the future.
Channel Four is a U.K. national television channel, set up in 1982 and today accounts for around 10% of all viewing. It is financed from the sale of commercial airtime but it is not a private enterprise. It is, effectively, a public service organisation that as well as being a general broadcaster is given certain requirements within U.K. broadcasting. Those requirements are : a) to ensure that Channel Four programmes contain a suitable proportion of material calculated to appeal to tastes and interests not generally catered for by Channel 3 (ITV) b) that innovation and experiment in the form and content of those programmes are encouraged and:- c) generally that Channel Four is given a distinctive character of its own. Four has thus to plough its way between the interests of âpublic service broadcastingâ and the interest of commercial survival. It is within this context that one can see the importance of audience reaction data to us.
Every day, managers of T.V, channels, in France like in most other western Countries, receive in their office tables and graphs showing the day before audience of T.V. broadcasts. They discover the number of viewers at each time segment throughout the day and the market share of each channel. In this way they profit from invaluable information, allowing them to learn about T.V. viewer's choice and to appreciate the soundness of their programming policy. These data will give selling arguments to T.V. time vendors and provide media planners, in advertising agencies as well as in space buying shops, with fresh bases for their calculations. With the advent of press-button peoplemeters leading to very fine measurements of individual viewing, one can say we have now entered into the era of scientific audience calculation where the combined knowledge of electronics and of operational research, offers advertisers indisputable campaign audience measurements.
Audience estimates derived from data collected from meter households are provided daily and also cumulated over successive days to provide weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual audience estimates. The same estimates can be used to estimate change between various periods. Change can be expressed as either differences of estimates between periods or as ratios of the estimates for the periods. Some year-to-year changes may be viewed as unreasonable resulting in uneasiness because of concern that the change is due to changes in the process rather than changes in the population being measured.
How Television and Radio audiences are measured varies widely across the world, and specifically in Europe. That differences in techniques matter is demonstrated. Users of research data, whether representing the interests of international brands or of public broadcasters, need figures that can be compared across national boundaries. A European joint industry working party has been working to this end over the past year. It has published a report giving recommendations on good practice in the data collection and reporting procedures for Television peoplemeter systems. There remain (at least) three issues that need to be resolved by a programme of experimental work that would be painless to research budgets if tackled on a joint industry basis: 1. "presence" v "viewing" 2. linkage of audience appreciation 3. the software conventions of what constitutes a "viewer" at a particular moment. A challenge is put to the industry to invest in its own future.
This paper reconstructs the history of the introduction of People Meters to Australia and New Zealand during 1989-1991. The rival multinational People Meter operators invested heavily in the race to secure contracts to provide ratings services in the antipodean countries but the currencies now' are a Nielsen system in Australia and an AGB system in New Zealand. The pathways to success for these operators were very different in each country.
The intermedia watch has been discussed since 1987 and it was often seen as a myth. However, the production of a wearable passive device for recording television, radio, and print audiences is finally ready for a technology demonstration. This presentation will demonstrate the broadcast aspect of the intermedia watch. It is the premise of this paper that in the U.S. there cannot be a single measurement tool for all media until we have a breakthrough in the measurement of television and its' current push-button personal meter. The reason is economics. Television gets the lion's (though declining) share of the dollars. And the Coca Cola's, P&G's, and Kraft General Foods' who dominate the spending of advertising dollars in the USA are trying to manage a fragmenting media effort. The personal meter for television, radio and magazine leads directly to a TRUE single source measurement of most media exposure and most purchasing. The attraction of electronic single source measurement is due to the problems created by respondent human memory and interviewer human error. To be meaningful, any improvements in metering must raise the response rate of a television meter sample from its current low levels (37% of the predesignated randomly selected sample) by simplifying the task of obtaining respondent cooperation.
In France, radio audience measurement for people 15 years old or more is pre-eminently carried out using Mediametrie's 75000 Survey, whose methodology is generally known and accepted. Mediametrie is both attentive to its market and eager to see progress in the analysis of radio audiences; it has therefore undertaken tests to assess the feasability of radio audience measurement covering children. The tests were principally concerned with children's capacities to understand, identify and remember survey-related material. Carried out at the end of 1991 the study was based on the principles of the 75000 Survey, adapted to take account of children's characteristics. The results produced were very instructive: proportionately more children listen to radio than adults, but they listen for shorter periods. Contrary to popularly held opinion, more children listen to radio on school days than on non-school days, but on school days the time spent listening is shorter.
Three methods currently in use in South Africa to estimate television audiences are explained. In order to obtain comparable data , the periods of fieldwork for the three methods had to be matched as closely as possible. The samples used for the comparison of data from the three methods had to be filtered from larger samples where appropriate, so that they represented the same universe. The three sets of data are compared. Validation tests had indicated that the peoplemeter data was close to the 'truth'. Therefore, this data was used as the basis against which other data were compared. Of the three, the peoplemeter data provided the lowest audience estimates. There were substantial differences in the audience levels reported by the different methods, but the patterns of daily viewing were remarkably similar. Most of the differences between the peoplemeter levels on the one hand, and the interview and diary data on the other hand, were the result of the methods used to allocate respondents to viewing time periods.