Word: nielsens
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...seems like something out of George Orwell: television sets souped up so they can watch viewers watching them. Last week Nielsen Media Research, purveyor of the make-or-break TV ratings, announced plans to develop just such a gizmo. The "passive people meter," a computerized camera system, would sit atop sets in thousands of households, keeping an eye on every move that viewers made...
...purpose of the system, which will not be ready for deployment for at least three years, is to get a more objective, precise measure of who makes up the TV audience. In the past, viewers in Nielsen homes either filled out diaries or identified themselves by pushing buttons on hand-held consoles. With the new system, a computer would simply spot individual household members as they came into view and record them, second by second, as they faced the TV, read newspapers or merely turned their heads...
...computer then makes more detailed scans at higher and higher resolutions, trying to match facial features to those of family members stored in its memory. (An unfamiliar face would be recorded as a "visitor.") When the machine makes a match, the information is sent by phone lines to Nielsen's central ratings computer, and then to subscribers...
...reaction of advertisers and broadcasters to Nielsen's new meter has been generally positive. With $25 billion in annual ad revenue at stake, the industry has an interest in accurate audience measurements. The one uncertainty, assuming the system works, is how viewers would react to the presence of a camera-like device in their homes. Nielsen officials take pains to point out that the machine would not transmit pictures -- only data about who is watching what...
...moves reveal once again how thoroughly the network news divisions have bought into the Nielsen mind-set. Faced with shrinking audiences and rising costs, TV executives have discovered that news programming, which costs much less to produce than entertainment fare, can be a moneymaker in prime time. Yet once these shows enter the arena with Knots Landing and The Cosby Show, they must play by the same rules...