Julia Grey
Measuring the reach of the goggle box
HOW do TV broadcasters figure out audience ratings for their programmes? – Laura, Gauteng
* SOME theories about how broadcasters measure the number of people watching each programme really tickle the imagination. “The waterboard,” say some. “The sudden surge of water supplied to households during ad breaks shows how many people are rushing off to the toilet in between their favourite TV shows.”
Piet Smit has a more plausible explanation. Smit is technical director of the South African Advertising Research Foundation, an independent body that aims to measure media audiences as objectively as possible for its members (which range from the SABC and MNet to advertisers and advertising agencies).
In order to represent accurately the “total South African universe”, 880 homes are selected in a scientific way from around the country, in settlements ranging from the messy metropolises like Johannesburg, to the mini-dorps in the back of beyond.
There are some technical constraints involved in the selection, however: private homes have to be connected to mains electricity (battery-operated TVs can’t be monitored), and they must be within an automatic telephone-exchange area (so that the data can be transferred).
There are two aspects to the monitoring of these 880 households. The first involves the monitoring of the TV itself, through an All Media and Product Study (Amps) metre that is attached to the TV.
This electronic gadget, which looks like your average car radio, registers everything that happens to the TV set. It is able to identify which TV stations are being watched (including those through an MNet decoder), and even when a video recorder is operating.
The other aspect of monitoring involves what Smit calls the “people meter system”, which measures the audience in more detail. Each member of the household (whose demographics – from age and sex to education and income – are known to the Advertising Research Foundation) has a particular button assigned to them on a remote control.
When the individuals start viewing, they press their personal buttons on the remote and the Amps meter registers which member of the household is watching at that moment. This “button-pushing technology” enables the foundation to identify the number and demographics of people watching each programme.
The information is transmitted via telephone lines through a modem to a computer in Johannesburg. This data is collected on a continuous basis, and the members of the foundation receive a weekly report on what this cross-section of the public has been watching.
Although the top 10 favourites vary from week to week, there are some favourites that remain constant – MNet’s Egoli, for example, regularly makes the golden list.
Smit puts South Africa among the leaders in this kind of technology. He attributes this to the fact that the system was implemented during the sanctions and disinvestment era in the late 1980s, which made local development a necessity.
One particularly sophisticated feature of the local technology is the facility that is used to register the details of people visiting the TV-watching household. Buttons on the remote are reserved for visitors, and their age and sex are keyed in and recorded by the Amps meter.
The foundation is investigating the use of other technologies so that households in less developed areas can be included in the audience ratings.
In order to get around the need for a telephone, a specially modified Amps meter uses radio technology to transmit the data to a nearby home with a telephone, which acts as a “host” and transmits the information to Johannesburg. This technology will make it possible “to reflect the viewing of many disadvantaged communities”.
In case you’re wondering what the monitored households get out of it -well, apart from the prestige of contributing to the audience ratings, they also get all the equipment linked to their TV sets (as well as the sets themselves) maintained free of charge.
See anything that puzzles you? We’ll try to find out how it is done. Write to Julia Grey, Mail & Guardian, PO Box 32362, Braamfontein 2017, or fax your queries to her at (011)403-1025, or e-mail them to [email protected]