ABSTRACT
This chapter recounts and explains the fast, global rise of quantitative, continuous, individual television audience measurement (TAM), based on the technology of the peoplemeter (PM), starting from the mid-1980s. While television markets used a variety of methods for knowing their audience until then (including an early version of the PM in Germany from 1975), the global deregulation and commercialization of TV markets, and the globalization of marketing methods prompted a major change in representations of the television audiences. The PM was quickly adopted as the “state-of-the-art” technology as it fitted the requirements of various stakeholders on each market, while making the quantified audience comparable between markets. The apparent stability goes with many tensions between actors especially in less stable political and televisual landscapes. Today the PM remains the basis for TAM, although it is increasingly accompanied by additional methods for measuring delayed viewing, multiscreen television, and audience involvement beyond exposure.
