Page 75 - Living Room WarsDesprately Seeking the Audience Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World

9
The people meter ‘solution’

By the late 1980s, the people meter had undeniably become the industry’s token of what
has been called a ratings ‘revolution’. The British research firm AGB introduced the
instrument in the United States by announcing its plans to enter the American ratings
market in 1983, and started testing its PeopleMeter (with Boston as test market) in 1985.
AGB aggressively marketed the new measurement instrument by presenting it as the
answer to the inadequacies of both the setmeter and the diary, thereby challenging
Nielsen’s monopoly in the national television audience measurement arena (Fierman
1985). Nielsen, of course, did not want to be outdone and followed suit by developing
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and testing its own version of the people meter, called the Homeunit. Within a few years,
people meters have achieved tremendously high acceptance in the industry, in the
conviction that they are ‘the technological cutting edge of the future’ (Beville 1986a: 54).
As a result both AGB and Nielsen, locked in deadly competition, officially inaugurated
their people meter national ratings service in September 1987. Nielsen, who terminated
his NTI Audimeter service a month later, succeeded in regaining its monopoly in the
national ratings scene when AGB, who only managed to contract one network, CBS, had
to close down its service about a year later (Broadcasting 20 June 1988; 1 August 1988).
By that time, the people meter had established itself as the standard instrument for
measuring the television audience, as succinctly proclaimed by the title of one
Broadcasting feature, Television in the peoplemeter age’ (7 September 1987).
The people meter has been presented as a highly sophisticated, technologically-
advanced instrument to measure the various kinds of viewing behaviour in the
complicated television landscape of the late twentieth century. Essentially, the basic idea
is deceptively simple. A people meter is an electronic monitoring device that can record
individual viewing rather than just sets tuned in, as the traditional setmeter does. When a
viewer begins to watch a programme, he or she must press a numbered button on a
portable keypad, which looks like the well-known television remote control device.
When the viewer stops watching, the button must be pressed again. A monitor attached to
the TV set lights up regularly to remind the viewer of the button pushing task. All
members of a sample family have their own individual buttons, while there are also some
extra buttons for guests. Linked to the home by telephone lines, the system’s central
computer correlates each viewer’s number with demographic data about them stored in
its memory. The AGB people meter for example was capable of continuously measuring
the activity of up to four sets in each household, including VCRs, and monitors 97
channels.
This intricate measurement technology is attractive for the industry because it holds
the promise of providing more detailed and precise data on the television audience,
because it requires all household members to identify themselves when watching. The
people meter has boosted the hope for better measurement of the wide spectre of cable
and VCR viewing (including zipping and zapping), and has been praised for its capability