ABSTRACT
By the late 1980s, the people meter had undeniably become the industry’s token of what has been called a ratings ‘revolution’. The British research firm AGB introduced the instrument in the United States by announcing its plans to enter the American ratings market in 1983, and started testing its PeopleMeter (with Boston as test market) in 1985. AGB aggressively marketed the new measurement instrument by presenting it as the answer to the inadequacies of both the setmeter and the diary, thereby challenging Nielsen’s monopoly in the national television audience measurement arena (Fierman 1985). Nielsen, of course, did not want to be outdone and followed suit by developing and testing its own version of the people meter, called the Homeunit.1 Within a few years, people meters have achieved tremendously high acceptance in the industry, in the conviction that they are ‘the technological cutting edge of the future’ (Beville 1986a: 54). As a result both AGB and Nielsen, locked in deadly competition, officially inaugurated their people meter national ratings service in September 1987. Nielsen, who terminated his NTI Audimeter service a month later, succeeded in regaining its monopoly in the national ratings scene when AGB, who only managed to contract one network, CBS, had to close down its service about a year later (Broadcasting 20 June 1988; 1 August 1988). By that time, the people meter had established itself as the standard instrument for measuring the television audience, as succinctly proclaimed by the title of one Broadcasting feature, Television in the peoplemeter age’ (7 September 1987).
