Television Audiences Across the World: Deconstructing the Ratings Machine PDF
Preview Television Audiences Across the World: Deconstructing the Ratings Machine
Television Audiences Across the World Also by Jérôme Bourdon Histoire de la télévision sous de Gaulle Haute fidélité, pouvoir et télévision Introduction aux Médias (Italian and Portuguese translation) Le Récit Impossible. Le conflit israélo-palestinien et les médias Du service public à la télé-réalité, une histoire culturelle des télévisions européennes (Italian translation forthcoming) Also by Cécile Méadel Quantifier le public. Histoire des mesures d’audience à la radio et à la television Histoire de la radio des années trente. De l’auditeur au sans-filiste Governance, Regulations and Power on the Internet Television Audiences Across the World Deconstructing the Ratings Machine Edited by Jérôme Bourdon Tel Aviv University, Israel and Cécile Méadel Mines ParisTech, France Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Jérôme Bourdon and Cécile Méadel 2014 Individual chapters © Contributors 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-34509-7 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identifi ed as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-46633-7 ISBN 978-1-137-34510-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137345103 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Contents List of Tables and Figures ix Acknowledgements x Notes on Contributors xi Deconstructing the Ratings Machine: An Introduction 1 Jérôme Bourdon and Cécile Méadel The rise of the people(meter) 2 Critical approaches to ratings 6 A sociology of quantification 12 Procedural truth and substantial truth 13 Time-bound truths 14 The guarantors of trust 15 Qualifying to quantify 17 Qualifying by compromise 20 Joint and competitive interests 21 Trade and politics 25 Audience ratings and globalization: the new faces of the national public 27 PART I INVENTING MEASUREMENT 1 The Politics of Enjoyment: Competing Audience Measurement Systems in Britain, 1950–1980 33 Stefan Schwarzkopf What does it mean to ‘measure’ audiences? 33 Origins of television audience research in Britain, 1936–1955 35 The BBC–ITV audience measurement controversy, 1955–1975 40 Compromises and performances: audience research after 1975 46 2 Still the British Model? The BARB versus Nielsen 53 Marc Balnaves The BARB structure 54 The new BARB panel – consensus threatened 56 ‘All a twitter’ over ITV 58 The US structure 61 Conclusion 66 v vi Contents 3 Canada’s Audience Massage: Audience Research and TV Policy Development, 1980–2010 69 Philip Savage and Alexandre Sévigny Audiences and policy 71 Scholarly work on Canadian audiences 72 The audience massage model 74 ‘CanCon’ regulations 77 CBC-TV KPIs 79 Citizens as audience 81 Conclusion 85 4 The Monopoly that Won’t Divide: France’s Médiamétrie 88 Jérôme Bourdon and Cécile Méadel From administrative service to commercial monopoly 89 The ‘neutral’ organization 93 The ‘neutral’ machine 95 The ‘neutrally’ observed and observing subject 98 Conclusion 100 5 Pioneering the Peoplemeter: German Public Service 102 Susanne Vollberg A short outline of the German television landscape 102 Early audience measurement for public broadcasters 104 The first ‘peoplemeter’ 105 Involving private broadcasters in television audience measurement 106 Increased measurement panel 108 Conclusion 109 PART II APPROPRIATING AUDIENCE FIGURES 6 Power Games: Audience Measurement as a Mediation between Actors in India 113 Santanu Chakrabarti Industry measurement of audiences and the academy 114 The societal influence of audience measurement systems: the debate 116 Marketplace critiques of existing audience measurement 118 The defence in the marketplace 122 The power struggle in the marketplace 123 The marketplace and the state 125 The voices heard and the voices ignored 127 The end of an era? 129 Contents vii 7 Imagining Audiences in Brazil: Class, ‘Race’ and Gender 132 Esther Hamburger, Heloisa Buarque de Almeida and Tirza Aidar Television in Brazil: early start, slow development 133 The emergent field of audience research 135 Ibope and the social scale controversy: revenue and ‘race’ biases 137 Interrogating class, sex and age 141 Television audience research, women and consumerism: gendering the audience 144 Further research: on the workings of specific transnational constructs of television audiences 147 8 From Referee to Scapegoat, but Still Referee: Auditel in Italy 153 Massimo Scaglioni The necessary referee: Auditel arrives 155 Technical use: pars destruens and pars construens 157 Public use: the apocalyptics and the integrated 159 9 Domestication of Anglo-Saxon Conventions and Practices in Australia 164 Mark Balnaves Establishing the convention 165 Distortions in audience measurement 170 Challenges to the convention: from sampling to (apparent) census 174 Conclusion 177 10 Market Requirements and Political Challenges: Russia between Two Worlds 179 Sergey Davydov and Elena Johansson The Russian TV industry and market 179 1992–1999: from the first measurement system to the first TAM tender 184 The second TAM tender (2003–2004) 187 The current measurement system 189 Conclusion 192 PART III CONFRONTING CHANGES 11 The Role of Ratings in Scheduling: Commercial Logics in Irish Public Television 199 Ann-Marie Murray RTÉ: public but also commercial service 200 viii Contents Organizational ‘reform’ 202 Defining the audience 211 Redefining service 213 12 The Local Peoplemeter, the Portable Peoplemeter, and the Unsettled Law and Policy of Audience Measurement in the United States 216 Philip M. Napoli The introduction of the Nielsen local peoplemeter 217 The introduction of the Arbitron portable peoplemeter 219 The unsettled law and policy of audience measurement 222 Questioning the speech status of audience ratings 224 Toward a definitive speech status for audience ratings 226 Conclusion 230 13 Challenges of Digital Innovations: A Set-Top Box Based Approach 234 Tom Evens and Katrien Berte A multifaceted mass-media instrument 236 The Belgian peoplemeter approach 237 Reluctance towards innovation 239 Tracking on-demand and time-shifted viewing 240 Using accurate set-top box generated data 242 Reconfiguring the value chain of audience measurement 244 Conclusions 246 14 Thickening Behavioural Data: New Uses of Ratings for Social Sciences 248 Jakob Bjur Audience measurement data – the real versus the constructed 249 Thickening behavioural data 251 Reading the longitudinal (time) 252 Reading the social (space) 256 The outcome of thickening 258 Thickening as a key to closed territories of human action 259 Bibliography 264 List of Tables and Figures Tables 3.1 The Audience Massage Model 74 7.1 Social classification according to available balance after fixed expenses 136 7.2 TV sampling and population characteristics TV (target – estimated value). Distribution according to social class, by year. Greater São Paulo, 1970 to 1997 139 Figures 3.1 Audience research revenues in Canada 76 7.1 Population with access to television, according to IBOPE estimates and IBGE demographic data. Metropolitan Region of São Paulo – 1979 through to 2004 141 7.2 TV audience ratings, by sex and time slot. São Paulo and surrounding areas, 1982 through to 1997 146 14.1 Modelling the traditional establishment of ratings, based on individual viewing data 254 14.2 Modelling social viewing behaviours from parallel action within households 257 ix
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