ABSTRACT
SAAOR’s move from Paris to Munich and its fusion with East European Audience Research, at a time when events were piling up in the broadcast area, meant that 1991 was in many ways a year of transition. The Soviet Union lurched from one crisis to the next. The two audience research staffs had to adjust to new initials (MOR) and a new working environment. Traveler surveys were phased out. All survey research and all focus group projects would henceforward take place in-country. The countries of Eastern Europe were shifting slowly in the direction of democratic change, and Gorbachev’s resignation on December 25, 1991 was the signal for the ex-Soviet republics to take the same path.
