The BBC World Service has been developing a series of performance indicators which permit its activities to be assessed, particularly in comparison with its major competitors in the international radio broadcasting arena. Some of these address questions about the audience. Some are relatively straightforward and deal with the numbers and location of listeners, the regularity of listening and audience demographics. This paper addresses the problem of providing indicators of appreciation of programme or service quality. From the BBC's perspective in particular, the degree to which listeners trusted what they heard was of particular importance. Whereas audience measures can be used in broadly similar ways in different countries and cultures, assessing the perceived quality of service globally runs up against the problem of differences in meaning and interpretation in different cultures. What was needed firstly was an approach which allowed respondents to define in their own terms what they meant by trust and programme quality, using their criteria and priorities. Secondly we needed to find ways of quantifying this in a comparable way across cultures. The methodology which has been developed to solve this problem employs a technique developed by psychologists at Leeds University's Family Research Centre which combines attribution theory with current concepts of discourse analysis. A series of group discussions held in different locations produce a series of causal attributional statements from which it is possible to map the underlying structure of values applied to the area of international broadcasting. Analysis of these identifies the two kinds of values which appear to surround international broadcasting - "intrinsic" values to do with approval, and "empowering" values to do with listening. It also produces measures of the relative strength and salience of the components of these values in different cultural milieux. The second stage is to develop a series of agree/disagree statements derived from the values generated in different cultural settings which can be used on representative sample surveys. From this second stage, measures of the Effective Quality of the BBC's services and those of its major competitors are achieved. These are made comparable by the application of weighting criteria derived from the salience and strength of the relevant values in each cultural setting.
Several common problems in designing and evaluating nationally representative sampling frames for countries in the Middle East are identified, with Jordan being used as a case study. Due to the absence of reliable information on several key demographic variables for the population, and practical constraints on finance and time, a "hybrid" methodology combining random selection principles with a quota "overlay" was employed for a national survey of media use in Jordan in September 1993. The design and implementation of the study are described, and key results are presented. Reference is also made to problems encountered during the fieldwork stages, and the procedures used to address them.
Rule induction and neural networks have been applied to audience data to produce promising results for understanding and predicting audience behaviour. Potential deployment designs suggest that this will be a fruitful way to assist the task of scheduling.
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 describes research done on behalf of a leading late night British news and current affairs programme, Newsnight. The editor was concerned about the ten-year-old programme's current status in the changing climate of news and current affairs programming, and commissioned research to inform decisions about the programme's future. The first part of this paper describes special analysis of quantitative data routinely collected by the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB). A demographic profile of Newsnight's average audience is produced together with an analysis of the overlap between those watching Newsnight and those viewing other news programmes on the same evening. The effects of the Gulf crisis on viewing figures are reported. The second part of the paper describes complementary qualitative research in group discussions with viewers of Newsnight. Attitudes to news and the media show that people are increasingly conscious of the need to monitor news information critically. Viewers have developed their own typology of news and current affairs programmes on television: different programme types generate different expectations about the impartiality of the information conveyed and the role of both presenter and viewer. In this context Newsnight's unique place is identified and specific suggestions for programme development made.
This paper presents a synthesis of the BBC World Service's experience over the past two or three years in conducting quantitative research in Eastern Europe. The focus is not on any one of the dozen or so surveys which we have done in the region, but rather on the state of the industry in the area. Firstly, there is an overview of the standards and approach to research in the area from a cautionary perspective. The lack of a research tradition in the region has specific causes and has left the area as a research vacuum which is now being filled with much research of variable quality. This is followed by a summary of the main problems encountered in commissioning research in that part of the world. Individual problems are described and analysed with proposals for solutions, or strategies for maximising quality. The information is perhaps most useful to those commissioning survey research in the region, but it is also intended to generate debate among practitioners, for whom the issues are probably familiar.
The paper describes the role of the Broadcasting Research Department in the development of the BBC's daytime television service. The research comprised a series of studies, involving reanalysis of existing data about the actual and potential audience for daytime television, and original research concerning audience perceptions about television in the daytime, and reactions to particular programme ideas. Discussion focuses on the extent to which this research significantly contributed to the development of the daytime service, outlining the constraints on both the schedulers and researchers which might have influenced this contribution.
To the outside observer, audience research appears essentially as the production of a set of 'objective' results on audience size, reactions or attitudes. It is tempting to feel that, because such results are often provided in the context of broadcasting decisions, audience research is actually having a direct effect on such decisions. The authors argue that this is not the case, and that audience research cannot make a real contribution to broadcasting decisions if it does not understand the broadcasters' 'culture' and the thinking process behind the making of programmes. In that respect the researchers relation to the broadcasters must parallel the relation of the broadcasters to the listeners: in both cases, a balance needs to be achieved between professional integrity and the needs of the 'client'.
This paper will use material from three studies to demonstrate that, even at low levels of participation, postal surveys can be used for rapid and reliable feedback.
The main body of the paper is concerned with the research programme that was mounted in relation to the £2½ million campaign, 'Britain at its Best', which can be regarded as one of the most successful corporate-image advertising campaigns ever undertaken in Britain. The design of the research programme and the results observed are discussed in relation to the answers to three questions: Is it likely to work? What effect has it had? What are the implications for the future?. The final part of the paper returns to the conference theme of 'Research for Profitability' and outlines five major ways in which BP has profited significantly from this research programme.
Broadcasting lays an adult world open to any child who can turn a switch, displaying this world effortlessly, vividly and for the-most part uncritically. The more television takes over from radio as the main broadcasting medium, the greater the attraction to the child. The BBC has shared the general concern in recent years about the effect of broadcasting on children, and has recognised that a primary need In this field is to be able to assess the child audience, its size and, if possible, its reactions. This paper outlines the evolution and methods of their present system of finding out the number of children listening to or viewing each programme broadcast, with brief references to the results and to current experiments in the more difficult problem of gauging children's reactions to programmes.