Rating the Audience The Business of Media

by Balnaves, Mark; O'Regan, Tom; Goldsmith, Ben

• ISBN13: 9781849663410
• ISBN10: 1849663416
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-01-16
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Knowing, measuring and understanding media audiences have become a multi-billion dollar business. But the convention that underpins that business, audience ratings, is in crisis.Rating the Audienceis the first book to show why and how audience ratings research became aconvention, an agreement, and the first to interrogate the ways that agreement is now under threat.Taking a historical approach, the book looks at the evolution of audience ratings and the survey industry. It goes on to analyze today's media environment, looking at the role of the Internet and the increased difficulties it presents for measuring audiences. The book covers all the major players and controversies, such as Facebook's privacy rulings and Google's alliance with Nielsen.Offering the first really comparative study, it will be critical for media students and professionals.

Author Biography

Professor Mark Balnaves is Senior Research Fellow in New Media, in the Department of Internet Studies in the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts, Curtin University of Technology, Australia.
Professor Tom O'Regan was the Head of the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at UQ from 2005-2008, Director of the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy (1999-2002, Griffith University) and the Centre for Research in Culture and Communication (1996-1998, Murdoch University). In 2002 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. From 2002-2003 he was the Australian UNESCO-Orbicom Professor of Communication.

Ben Goldsmith is a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. vii
List of Tables	p. ix
Preface	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xiv
Why the Ratings Are Important	p. 1
Introduction	p. 1
The Single Number	p. 8
Summary	p. 16
The Convention	p. 21
The Crossleys' -Archibald Crossley	p. 21
Arthur C. Nielsen (and the 'Black Box')	p. 24
Bill McNair and George Anderson	p. 28
New Forms of Knowledge about Audiences	p. 38
Theorizing the Convention	p. 44
Summary	p. 47
The Panel and the Survey	p. 49
The Ratings Intellectuals	p. 50
Lazarsfeid	p. 52
The Very Idea of Measurement	p. 55
Singie Source: 'The Holy Grail'	p. 65
Summary	p. 71
The Audit	p. 74
Taming Error	p. 74
Invisible Audiences	p. 84
The BBC: Robert SilveyÆs Thermometer and Barometer	p. 90
Summary	p. 95
The Technologies of Counting	p. 99
The Diffusion of Ratings Technology	p. 100
Proliferation of Channels and Measurement	p. 107
Neuroscience, Neuromarketing and New Technologies of Measurement	p. 111
Timeshifting and Technologies of Counting	p. 115
The Increasing Technical Complexity of Audience Measurement	p. 118
Calls for Harmonization	p. 120
Summary	p. 122
The Ratings Provider	p. 123
The Official Truth	p. 124
The Silent Revolution	p. 127
Superior Technology1: ATR-OzTAM and ACNielsen Controversy in Australia	p. 132
'Superior Technology': Nielsen versus Hooper, Nielsen versus Arbitron	p. 137
Summary	p. 142
The Networks (and Other Media Providers)	p. 145
TV Economics	p. 146
Standardization	p. 149
Small Audiences and Set-top Boxes	p. 155
United Kingdom	p. 160
Summary	p. 171
Advertisers and Media Planners	p. 172
The Dual Persona of the Advertiser	p. 172
The Media Planner	p. 181
Cost Efficiency and the Curve of Experience	p. 184
The Competent User	p. 192
Summary	p. 195
The Audience	p. 197
The Modern Audience	p. 198
The Average Household and the Representative Individual	p. 201
Home Studies and the Public	p. 205
Audience Consent	p. 206
The Knowledge Aggregators	p. 210
Summary	p. 215
The Critics	p. 217
The Broader Context	p. 218
The Bogart Persona	p. 221
Objections to Ratings	p. 224
Setting Limits to Statistics	p. 230
Problems with Increases in Scale
Personal Secondary Data	p. 235
Deprofessionalization of Media Research	p. 237
Summary	p. 239
The Future of Ratings	p. 241
Bibliography	p. 256
Index	p. 268
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