Rating the Audience: The Business of Media

by Mark Balnaves, Tom O'Regan, Ben Goldsmith

Overview

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 Audience is the first book to show why and how audience ratings research became a convention, 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 real comparative study, it will be critical for media students and professionals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849663410
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/16/2012
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

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 vii

List of Tables ix

Preface x

Acknowledgements xiv

1 Why the Ratings Are Important 1

Introduction 1

The Single Number 8

Summary 16

2 The Convention 21

The Crossleys' -Archibald Crossley 21

Arthur C. Nielsen (and the 'Black Box') 24

Bill McNair and George Anderson 28

New Forms of Knowledge about Audiences 38

Theorizing the Convention 44

Summary 47

3 The Panel and the Survey 49

The Ratings Intellectuals 50

Lazarsfeid 52

The Very Idea of Measurement 55

Singie Source: 'The Holy Grail' 65

Summary 71

4 The Audit 74

Taming Error 74

Invisible Audiences 84

The BBC: Robert Silvey's Thermometer and Barometer 90

Summary 95

5 The Technologies of Counting 99

The Diffusion of Ratings Technology 100

Proliferation of Channels and Measurement 107

Neuroscience, Neuromarketing and New Technologies of Measurement 111

Timeshifting and Technologies of Counting 115

The Increasing Technical Complexity of Audience Measurement 118

Calls for Harmonization 120

Summary 122

6 The Ratings Provider 123

The Official Truth 124

The Silent Revolution 127

Superior Technology1: ATR-OzTAM and ACNielsen Controversy in Australia 132

'Superior Technology': Nielsen versus Hooper, Nielsen versus Arbitron 137

Summary 142

7 The Networks (and Other Media Providers) 145

TV Economics 146

Standardization 149

Small Audiences and Set-top Boxes 155

United Kingdom 160

Summary 171

8 Advertisers and Media Planners 172

The Dual Persona of the Advertiser 172

The Media Planner 181

Cost Efficiency and the Curve of Experience 184

The Competent User 192

Summary 195

9 The Audience 197

The Modern Audience 198

The Average Household and the Representative Individual 201

Home Studies and the Public 205

Audience Consent 206

The Knowledge Aggregators 210

Summary 215

10 The Critics 217

The Broader Context 218

The Bogart Persona 221

Objections to Ratings 224

Setting Limits to Statistics 230

Problems with Increases in Scale

Personal Secondary Data 235

Deprofessionalization of Media Research 237

Summary 239

11 The Future of Ratings 241

Bibliography 256

Index 268