For decades, the radio industry in Canada has measured listeners using diaries. Here’s how it would work: BBM Canada (the industry-owned organization that measures TV and radio ratings in Canada) would mail out paper diaries to randomly selected Canadians and ask them to record their radio tuning for a full week. Listeners would keep track of their listening habits and mail the diary back to the BBM. Then the data would be assembled into a report, which would be used as a reference when setting radio advertising rates.
But at the end of this month, the paper diary system will be replaced in four major Canadian cities: Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver (the system was replaced in Montreal last year). On August 31, 2009, the BBM will start measuring radio and television audiences using something called a Portable People Meter, or PPM. It’s a small device about the size of a pager that tracks radio and television habits by listening for hidden audio codes in broadcasts.
According to the BBM’s Tom Jenks, the PPMs will be rolled out to 4300 homes across Canada at the end of August, measuring both television and radio.
To talk more about this technological way of measuring a very old medium, Nora talked to Mark Ramsey. He’s a media consultant who works in audience research and brand development for companies like Clear Channel, CBS Radio, and Sirius/XM. A shorter version of this interview will air on an episode of Spark, but you can hear the full, uncut interview below, or download the MP3.
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[original image by Eric Rhoads]
Wish I knew about this interview before it was done. I haven't listened yet, but would have a question.
These meters rely on audio watermarks in programming. I am wondering if this could be expanded to discuss these same audio watermarks being abused as a form of DRM.
"DRM" is most often confused with the digital locks applied to content, such as the locked files from services like iTunes that only work with specific brands of players. The most controversial aspect of DRM are locks placed by third parties on the devices which we "own", where these third parties — not the owners — control the devices. What is not well understood is that DRM can restrict access to unlocked content with audio watermarks just as easily as they can restrict access to locked content, clarifying that the lock on the content is and has always been a red herring in the DRM debate.
Picture a visual example: Imagine if we had automatic detection of watermarks in digital photography. This means that anyone doing something controversial can simply wear (or broadcast/etc) the watermark and make their activities unable to be recorded. This is something journalists should be up at arms against, which is interesting considering many of the associations representing journalists seem to support rather than oppose this abuse of technology.
Unlike the locks on content which restrict interoperability of the content to specific brands, watermarking has both beneficial and harmful uses. How can we ensure that the increased usage of audio/video/etc watermarking is not abused as an excuse to mandate our devices be locked down against the interests of their owners (and thus society in general).