[Swprograms] NY Times magaziner article: Our Ratings, Ourselves

["Eric Floden" <ericf@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

interesting article on changes being made in trying to measure ratings - 
some mentions of radio throughout. . . 

article at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/magazine/10NIELSENS.html
(registration required) 

excerpt: 

Our Ratings, Ourselves
By JON GERTNER 

Published: April 10, 2005 

The Mismeasure of TV 

One of the great contradictions of modern American life is that almost 
everyone watches television while almost no one agrees anymore about what it 
really means to watch television. . . . But when it comes to figuring out 
how many of us are watching these shows, and whether we're paying attention 
while we're watching and even whether we're actually noticing the 
advertisements among the shows we may or may not be watching -- well, this 
is where things get tricky. 

For the past decade or so, watching television in America has been defined 
by the families recruited by Nielsen Media Research who have agreed to have 
an electronic meter attached to their televisions or to record in a diary 
what shows they watch. This setup may not last much longer. Just as 
programmers and advertisers are clamoring for a better understanding of the 
television audience, a wave of new consumer products has made it 
increasingly difficult to satisfy them. One day this January I sat in a 
Greenwich Village workroom with Bob Luff, the chief technology officer at 
Nielsen, as he pulled out gadget after gadget to show me what he's up 
against. Luff seemed to view the modern American home as a digital zoo where 
the lion is about to lie down with the lamb: radio is going on the Web, TV 
is going on cellphones, the Web is going on TV and everything, it seems, is 
moving to video-on-demand (V.O.D.) and (quite possibly) the iPod and the 
PlayStation Portable. ''Television and media,'' Luff said over the noise of 
five sets tuned to five different channels, ''will change more in the next 3 
or 5 years than it's changed in the past 50.'' 

... 

In all likelihood, the Houston trial will show that people are exposed to 
far more media and advertising than they think, or remember. Some P.P.M. 
tests in Philadelphia have already indicated that wearers tune into twice as 
many radio stations on a typical day as they ever note in their diaries. For 
better or worse, the P.P.M. changes the definition of ''media consumer 

... 



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