measuring audiences

8/8/2019 Measuring Audiences

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Measuring TV audiences with diaries

A diary survey is done by choosing a random sample of households, and sending interviewers to visit thosehouseholds. When a household agrees to co-operate inthe survey (with co-operating rates ranging from about30% of contacted households in rich western countries,up to about 95% in developing countries), theinterviewer usually leaves one diary for each TV set inthe household. This is different from radio surveys,which use one diary per person - because peopleusually watch TV in groups. A diary normally runs forone week or two weeks. Often there are several"practice days" at the beginning that are not used togenerate statistics.


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Television diaries are similar to radio diaries . The maindifference is that, while there is one radio diary foreach person in a household, there is usually one TV

diary for each TV set. The idea is that the diary isplaced on top of the TV set, stays there for a week, andwhoever watches a program on that set fills in thediary to show what channels they watched, at what

times.


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Each double-page opening of the diary usually has alarge table. The rows show all the quarter-hours of theday, while there is one column for each TV channel in

the survey area. People indicate their viewing byticking the box for the channel they watched, duringeach quarter hour. Such a diary doesn't show whichpeople in the household were watching: the tick only

means that somebody was watching. Another way of doing this is to enter in the box for the channel andquarter-hour not a tick but a number showing howmany people were watching.


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A still more elaborate way is to write the initial of eachviewer in the box. On the front page of the diary isrecorded the fact that (say) person A is a man aged 35-

44, B is a woman aged 25-34, and so on. Though thissounds simple enough, when I organized this type of diary survey the results were rather messy. Peopledidn't try very hard to co-operate.


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You can get much more accurate data from telephone(or personal interview) diaries, but people can onlyremember their viewing for a few days. This is usually a

much more expensive way to do a diary survey, but if distances are large and almost everybody has atelephone (as in Australia) it can be suitable for surveysof rural audiences.


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Measuring TV audiences with meters

U nlike a diary survey, where the respondents are differenteach week (or each two weeks, for a 2-week diary) metersurveys use panels of people for months at a time -anything from 6 months to 2 years. That's because of the

expense of installing meters. When a household agrees toco-operate (usually for some reward, such as guaranteedmaintenance for their TV set), a technician comes to thehome and wires a meter to each TV set. In countries wheremost homes have a connected telephone, the meter is alsoconnected to the phone line. The meter automaticallyrecords the channel the TV set is tuned to, minute byminute. In the early hours of the morning, the researchcompany's computer automatically dials the meter, whichsends that household's viewing data for the previous night.


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This is done in sets of 3 numbers: channel number - starting time - stopping time ...repeated as many times as different channels were

switched on.After ringing all the households in the sample (often300 to 400 per city) the computer has all the previousnight's data, and software automatically calculates thepercentage of homes watching each channel at eachtime. Buyers of the diary data - TV channel owners,advertising agencies, and large advertisers - are thensent a fax or email with the previous night's viewingdata.


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That's the simplest version, using "set-meters". But mostcountries now use "peoplemeters". As well as showingwhich channels each TV set was tuned to, at which times,the people living in the household are asked to indicate

their presence while watching TV. Typically, thepeoplemeter sits on top of the TV set. A common type of peoplemeter has 8 lights on its front, numbered 1 to 8. Themeter has its own remote control, with 8 buttons, one foreach person in the household, and the others for theiroccasional guests. So when button 1 is pressed, that tellsthe meter that (say) a man aged between 35 and 44 iswatching. Guests are prompted to enter their gender andage group.


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When the TV set is switched on, all the lights startflashing. A new model flashes up the message"Who is present?" As this is annoying for theviewers, they are likely to press their personalbuttons to stop the flashing. When the TV set ison, and nobody has pressed a button for about45 minutes, all the lights start flashing again. If nobody then presses a personal button, the

meter assumes they're all out of the room, anddoesn't record any viewing. But if at least oneperson presses a button, the meter keepsrecording that viewing.


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U nlike the setmeter, which is completely automatic, thepeoplemeter depends on the co-operation of viewers. Do peopleactually remember to press their buttons, or do they just press anybutton to stop the lights flashing? To demonstrate to their skepticalcustomers that peoplemeters give accurate data, the researchcompanies do manual checking - such as by ringing up members of their panel to ask what they are watching at that moment, thencomparing the answers with the peoplemeter data. From thefigures I've seen, compliance levels are quite good - correct around

90% of the time. The major problem is when people who werewatching a program leave the room (e.g. to answer a phone call)and forget to un-press their button. This produces audience figuresthat are a little too high.


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The most serious problem with peoplemeters is therepresentativeness of the panels. Often, less than half the households asked to co-operate actually do so,which raises the question of what is unusual abouthouseholds that are in the panel. From data I've seen,the wealthier and better-educated households areoften under-represented. As such people tend to spendless time watching TV, this also produces a slight

overestimate of audience sizes. Though TV stationsdon't care about that (they like to see large audiencesreported), potential advertisers are more skeptical.


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The most serious problem with peoplemeters is therepresentativeness of the panels. Often, less than half the households asked to co-operate actually do so,which raises the question of what is unusual abouthouseholds that are in the panel. From data I've seen,the wealthier and better-educated households areoften under-represented. As such people tend to spendless time watching TV, this also produces a slight

overestimate of audience sizes. Though TV stationsdon't care about that (they like to see large audiencesreported), potential advertisers are more skeptical.


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An emerging problem, in western countries, is what type of viewing isactually counted. There are now many ways to watch a TV programs...Broadcasts from local channels, received through an aerial.Broadcasts from international channels, from a satellite dish.

Viewing a TV program on a computer.Programs that are recorded on videotape or DVD, and viewed later byplaying back the recording.The same can be done with a "personal video recorder" or Tivo. Withthis, you can watch a program in "delayed time" - e.g. watching the first

half while the second half is still being broadcast.Another emerging problem is the very small portable TV sets nowbecoming popular in countries such as Japan. These cannot beconnected to fixed phone lines, and any peoplemeters could be largerthan the TV set itself. (This is why peoplemeters are not used for radio.)


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All these possibilities make it difficult to recordviewing: difficult, both in a technical sense, and indeciding exactly what should count as viewing. The

convention is that recorded viewing is counted only if itis played back within one week.


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In Australia in 1991, the diary system was supersededby a meter system. This was an excellent opportunityto find out the problems with diaries. There wereseveral clear differences. Audiences at evening peaktimes didn't change much, particularly for seriesprograms; they were marginally lower.But audiences in the middle of the day were muchhigher with meters than with diaries. The reasonseemed to be that midday programs were sort of trashy, and perhaps people who were watching TVaround midday were ashamed of watching thoseprograms, and didn't want other people in thehousehold to see that viewing in the shared diary.


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The other change with the introduction of peoplemeters was that late-night programsnow had much larger audiences. It seems thatwhen diaries were used, the late-night viewerseither forgot to fill them in, or couldn't bebothered.


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Measures of TV audiences

From the raw data of the numbers of households or people viewing TV channels,these measures are calculated:

Ratings (of households and/or people) Households U sing Television (H U Ts) TARPs (Target Audience Rating Points)

Reach and frequency Program rankings Audience share


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R atings People ratings are also a percentage, but of people, not

households. Unlike radio audience surveys,which don't includechildren under a certain age (around 10 to 15), TV surveysusually include everybody (except babies). People ratings canalso be based on demographic groups: age groups, sexes,occupation types, and so on.

HUT (Households Using Television) figures are simply ratings(not people ratings, though) for all channels combined. AnHUT figure of 50 means that 50% of households were watchingTV in the survey area. This can be either an average across along time period, or a figure at a particular time.

TAR Ps (Target Audience R ating Points are used mainly byadvertisers. They apply moe to commercials than programs.


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R each is the number or percentage of people whosee that program or commercial, or watch thatchannel in a particular time zone. For example, aprogram might have an average people rating of

10%, but a reach of 20% - which means that 10% of people in the survey area were watching it onaverage, but across the whole time it was beingbroadcast, 20% saw some part of it. Divide thepeople rating by the reach to find out the proportionof the program that the average viewer saw: in thatexample, it's 10 out of 20, which is half: i.e. theaverage person who watched the program saw half of it.


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Frequency also applies to commercials. For example, acommon myth (not supported by much empirical data) is thatthe average frequency for a TV commercial should be 3: inother words, the average person should see the commercial 3times before rushing off to buy the advertised product. (In

fact, people just don't behave like that.) Program rankings are popular with people who don't

understand the ratings system (e.g. many journalists). Theseare often reported in the press, along the lines of "Channel 28had 6 of the top 10 programs last week". Such figures can bequite misleading. A channel with 6 of the top 10 programs

probably had an audience share of around 30%, not the 60%you might assume. That's because in one week a channelmight broadcast around 150 programs, and most of theviewing was to the bottom 140, not the top 10.


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Audience share can be confusing. If a channel has 30%audience share, that doesn't mean that 30% of peoplewatch it. A share figure is a share of person-hours, not of people. A 30% share means that, of every 100 hours thatpeople in the survey area spent watching TV, 30% of thosehours were with that channel. So if you add up all theshare figures for every channel, the total is always 100%.It's also possible to calculate share figures for specific timeperiods, but it usually doesn't make sense to calculateshares for an individual program unless all channels in thearea have programs starting and finishing at the sametime.

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