Television Audiences Across the World: Deconstructing the Ratings Machine

by J. Bourdon (Editor), C. Mïadel (Editor)

Overview

This book is the first to deal with the world composition of television ratings. It focuses on the peoplemeter, a 25 year old technology which succeeds in homogenizing very different populations and television practices. It provides a fascinating account of the production of figures on which the whole world of popular culture depends.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137345097
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/24/2014
Edition description:	2014
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Tirza Aidar, University of Campinas, Brazil Mark Balnaves, University of Newcastle, Australia Katrien Berte, Centre for Information on the Media (CIM), the Belgian Joint Industry Committee Jakob Bjur, TNS-SIFO, Sweden Jérôme Bourdon, Tel Aviv University, Israel Heloisa Buarque de Almeida, University of São Paulo, Brazil Santanu Chakrabarti, Oxfam GB Sergey Davydov, National Research University, Russia Tom Evens, Ghent University, Belgium Esther Hamburger, University of São Paulo, Brazil Elena Johansson, Södertörn University, Sweden Cécile Méadel, Mines ParisTech, France Ann-Marie Murray, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland Philip M. Napoli, Rutgers University, USA Philip Savage, McMaster University, Canada Massimo Scaglioni, Università Cattolica, Milan, Italy Stefan Schwarzkopf, Queen Mary, University of London, UK Alexandre Sévigny, MacMaster University, Canada Susanne Vollberg, Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany

Table of Contents

Introduction; Jérôme Bourdon and Cécile Méadel PART I: INVENTING MEASUREMENT 1. The Politics of Enjoyment: Competing Audience Measurement Systems in Britain, 1950-1980; Stefan Schwarzkopf 2. Still the British Model? The BARB versus Nielsen; Marc Balnaves 3. Canada's Audience Massage: Audience Research and TV Policy Development, 1980-2010; Philip Savage and Alexandre Sévigny 4. The Monopoly that Won't Divide: France's Médiamétrie; Jérôme Bourdon and Cécile Méadel 5. Pioneering the Peoplemeter: German Public Service; Susanne Vollberg PART II: APPROPRIATING AUDIENCE FIGURES 6. Power Games: Audience Measurement as a Mediation Between Actors in India; Santanu Chakrabarti 7. Imagining Audiences in Brazil: Class, 'Race' and Gender; Esther Hamburger, Heloisa Buarque de Almeida, and Tirza Aidar 8. From Referee to Scapegoat, but still Referee: Auditel in Italy; Massimo Scaglioni 9. Domestication of Anglo-Saxon Conventions and Practices in Australia; Mark Balnaves 10. Market Requirements and Political Challenges: Russia Between Two Worlds; Elena Johansson and Sergey Davydov PART III: CONFRONTING CHANGES 11. The Role of Ratings in Scheduling. Commercial Logics in Irish Public Television; Ann-Marie Murray 12. The Local Peoplemeter, the Portable Peoplemeter, and the Unsettled Law and Policy of Audience Measurement in the US; Philip Napoli 13. Challenges of Digital Innovations: A Set-Top Box Based Approach; Katrien Berte and Tom Evens 14. Thickening Behavioral Data: New Uses of Ratings for Social Sciences; Jakob Bjur

Editorial Reviews

"This collection is a most comprehensive book on television ratings systems. It offers a remarkable breadth of case studies of nations from North and South America, Europe, and Asia. These also include a wide variety of types of measurement practices and organizational structures. Such an array offers great opportunities for comparative analyses. Just as important, the book is theoretically, analytically and critically sophisticated. It examines the various critiques of audience measurement, such as the important distinction between substantive and procedural truths and the underlying assumptions in quantification and statistics about human behaviour and social relations." - Richard Butsch, Rider University, USA

"The book is an impressive collection of chapters which together provide a wide perspective of perspectives on audiences - and to that degree the book is truly unique - that captures the systems of audience measurement ultimately based on ratings of some kind as well as the scope of ensuing challenges to audience measurement ... this book is certainly a contribution to strengthening the foundation of the field and allowing for much more advanced discussions in the future." - Media Innovations, 2015

From the Publisher