millions of viewers

[crisgal]

How do tv companies know how many people have watched their programmes? If I switched off to make a protest against something would anyone know?

[brachiopod]

It used to be done by paper questionaires covering a representative sample. This would be multiplied-up to produce the country-wide 'viewing figures'

Nowadays, there are a number of companies that supply BARB (British Audience Research Bureau) with their viewing figures, which measure audiences by direct monitoring. This involves, again, taking a representative sample (by geographical region, social grading etc.).

Each household in the sample will have every television, sky box, video etc in the house wired up to a 'black box' which measures what is being watched or recorded and sends the results down the phone line to the company HQ.

I have a friend who works for one of these companies and he can relate some good stories. (The male teenager who insists he doesn't want the sky box in his bedroom wired-up - they found out why when the results were compiled - an average of 3 hours a night of soft porn were measured from his box!)

Unless you are one of the people in these samples, turning off your television in protest won't affect a thing!

[LeMarchand]

If you want to make a protest, your best bet is to send an email or (preferably) a letter to the channel concerned. Detail your objections concisely and politely.

[twiglet4frog]

apparently i read that a watchdog installs monitering boxes into a select number of peoples homes that are pluged into the telly and records what is watched and when, this is then collected each week and is used as an actual way of working out percentage of viewing figures and multiply it all to get viewing numbers, this was definately used before digital transmission took off a few years ago

I know that NTL do the same thing by recording what u watch with the digital set top boxes and then download the days viewing at approx 11.45pm. This was allowed to come to the publics attention after a series of people complained that there transmissions were interuppted three times within a 2 min period every night at the same time, each break in transmission lasting from anywhere from 2 secs to 45 secs (very annoying to have 3 x 45sec blank screens during a film). NTL went on to explain the need to download viewing figures from each set top box to offer the best channels and pricing packages to suit all NTL customers and would endeavour to alter timings of downloads to effect the public viewing to a minimum.