International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

A people-meter is an electronic device that records when media are being used and who is using them. It is the preferred method of audience ratings companies that provide “third-party” estimates of audience size and composition to various clients (→ Audience Research ; Rating Methods ), and the principal means of national television audience measurement around the world. People-meters are constantly being enhanced and adapted to capture other forms of media use. People-meters, like the German “Teleskopie” system, were first developed in Europe during the 1970s. They improved on earlier household meters that recorded set use but failed to capture information about who was actually watching the set. In 1987, the A. C. Nielsen Company adopted people-meters as the standard method for measuring national television network audiences in the United States (→ Nielsen Ratings ). Advertisers, who were increasingly interested in reaching specific target markets, found reliable, quickly gathered demographic information to be desirable. For the media, people-meters were a mixed blessing. Older networks that had sold time to advertisers primarily on the basis of audience size found no advantage in the technology. Newer cable networks that catered to smaller, more demographically homogeneous audiences benefited from a measurement technology that better demonstrated their value to advertisers. ... log in or subscribe to read full text