Abstract:

During 1984 advertisers in Australia began to be concerned that the video-cassette recorder (VCR) was eroding the size of the audience for live television, and as a result, reducing the frequency by which users of a VCR were being exposed to advertisements. Industry-based survey data at this time showed no changes in the size of audiences, and indeed showed that households who owned a VCR watched just as much live television as non-owners. Nevertheless this seemed implausible given the startling growth of the medium. The challenge facing researchers was to measure changes in consumption patterns without recourse to baseline data recorded before the introduction of the VCR.