ABSTRACT
Once the Television Act of 1953 left no further doubt that commercial (to be known, rather oddly, as independent) television was to be permitted we had to decide what kind of lTV audience information the BBC would need and how we could provide it. The most obvious need would be for measurements of lTV's audiences in terms which would make possible direct comparisons with similar information about BBC output. There could be no question about what should be done: we would have to widen the scope of our Survey of Listening and Viewing by requiring our interviewers to ask people about their viewing of lTV programmes in just the same way they asked about viewing of BBC-TV and listening to BBC Radio programmes. Plans were therefore made for this to begin from the first moment the lTV went on the air on 22nd September, 1955.
