ISSN: 1329-878X

Ratings in Transition No 105 November 2002 Order form Abstracts

Abstracts

Mark Balnaves, Liz Ferrier, Gail Phillips and Tom O'Regan: Introducing Ratings in Transition
There is considerable ferment surrounding audience measurement systems in Australia and internationally (Balnaves, O’Regan and Sternberg 2002). This article identifies the range and sources of this ferment. It pinpoints several pressure points such as the constitution of ratings panels and the problems of survey fatigue in a fragmenting media environment. Consideration is also given to ‘next generation’ ratings measurement technologies such as the personal people meter (PPM) and their likely impact upon the industry and its norms, and new media formats such as the personal video recorder (PVR) and the problems and opportunities they create for audience measurement systems.

Tom O'Regan, Ian Garland, Ian Muir, Robert Chard, Abigail Thomas, John Hartley: Ratings in Transition: Industry implications
This seminar discusses the implications for the industry of changes in the provision of ratings services in the metropolitan television markets in Australia. It brings together key players from the ratings companies, media planners and buyers, public broadcasters and leading academics. A particular focus of the seminar was the different results emerging from the ACNielsen and OzTAM people meter panels in the first half of 2001. This discussion illuminates the complex relationship among audience measurement industries, television companies, and media planners and buyers, and foreshadows the challenges facing audience measurement in new media environments.

Ian Muir interviewed by Gail Phillips: Afterword: Reflections on the Seminar
In this interview with Gail Phillips, Ian Muir reflects on the developments in the audience measurement industry since the Ratings in Transition seminar held in 2001.

Abigail Thomas interviewed by Gail Phillips
Abigail Thomas, Research Manager, ABC New Media, reflects on developments in new media audience research since the 2001 Ratings in Transition seminar. Abigail Thomas was interviewed by Gail Phillips.

Peter Danaher interviewed by Mark Balnaves
The new media environment is changing the ways in which television services are delivered and accessed, putting increasing strains on the long-standing conventional audience tracking methodology. Not only are people watching television in different ways, through the proliferation of services via internet and pay TV, but new recording technology is also giving them the power to select what they watch and when they watch it, even bypassing the ad breaks along the way. Peter Danaher, Professor of Marketing at the University of Auckland, looks at how the ratings industry is trying to address these challenges. Professor Danaher was interviewed by Mark Balnaves.

Ian Garland: The Future of Television Audience Measurement: Nielsen Media Research's View
Changing television delivery technology has presented huge challenges to the industry charged with tracking audience usage. Niche programming and personal recording technologies are making the concept of mass audiences increasingly problematic. This raises questions about how to capture exactly what the illusive viewer is doing in a way that is relevant to media buyers, advertisers and media companies. In this paper, Ian Garland reports on how Nielsen Media Research is tackling the problem.

David Rogerson and Mike McVay: Programming in a PPM World: Arbitron's View
The initial results coming out of the Arbitron portable people meter (PPM) tests suggest the current approach and thinking applied to radio station programming may have to undergo a thorough review in the future. The data from pilot surveys are revealing listening patterns which differ considerably from those recorded using the traditional diary system. There are indications that the audience tunes in to more services but for less time, and that listening is far more evenly spread around each quarter-hour than previously assumed. In this paper, David Rogerson, Managing Director of Strategic Media Solutions, and Mike McVay, President of the US-based company McVay Media, present some of the key data to emerge from work already done by Arbitron and discuss the implications for radio programmers.

Joan Warner interviewed by Gail Phillips: Look Before You Leap: Commercial Radio's View of the Road Ahead
While the broadcast industry as a whole may be abuzz with the potential for new survey methodologies, the Australian commercial radio sector retains a more pragmatic perspective. Joan Warner, Chief Executive Officer for the commercial radio industry body Commercial Radio Australia, talks about radio’s place in the multimedia environment and the hurdles new survey technologies will have to overcome to deliver the sort of data the industry will be prepared to trust. Joan was interviewed by Gail Phillips.

Liz Ferrier: Bring Out the 'Backroom Boys': The Role of Media Planners and Buyers in the New Knowledge Economy
This paper outlines the relatively recent emergence of a specialised field of media services that come under the title of media planning and buying. It details the kinds of work this field involves, and the position it occupies in relation to other branches of the advertising industry, noting its increasing centrality in advertising and growing profile in the press. The history of its emergence and development as a separate field in Australia is closely linked to changes in the structure and regulation of the advertising industry. The paper examines challenges currently facing this area of advertising, including the global downturn in advertising, fragmentation of media audiences, and changes in technologies of audience measurement. It suggests that there has been increased value placed on the media planners’ and buyers’ specialised expertise, especially as audiences have become more segmented and fragmented, as traditional media loses its reach, and as clients have come to expect more accountability in relation to their advertising investment. The emergence of specialist media planners and buyers is situated alongside other changes occurring in the advertising industry, in the national context of particular institutional practices (commissioning system, accreditation and deregulation of the industry), and in the broader context of global economic restructuring and the emergence of the informational mode of development. The challenges faced by the advertising industry, articulated in the 2001 ratings debate, demonstrate Castells’ point that ‘the diffusion of new technologies under the new mode of development calls into question the very processes and organizational forms that were at the basis of demand for information technologies’.

John Ellen, introduced and interviewed by Liz Ferrier: Media Planning and Buying: An Insider's View
John Ellen is a media planning and buying consultant and former managing director of AIS Media in Brisbane. He speaks here about the emergence of specialised media (planning and buying) shops in Australia, commenting that the role of media planners and buyers needs to be understood in terms of the history of the advertising industry in Australia before and after the Trade Practice Commission’s inquiry in 1995 and the subsequent deregulation of the industry. John was interviewed by Liz Ferrier, who also introduces this article.

Lelia Green and Martin Trevaskis: If Media Planning and Buying Hadn't Existed, Would We Have Invented it This Way?
This paper argues that the profession of media planning and buying is subject to a variety of forces that operate together to create an over-reliance on ratings and circulation data. Such a dynamic suits the needs of mainstream media proprietors and offers advertisers a sense of confidence since they are dealing with established quantitative indicators. The status quo in media planning and buying is increasingly problematic, however, in the face of changes in the mediasphere and in audience consumption practices. What is more, advertisers are hungry for a qualitative dimension which is often missing from raw quantitative figures. New and alternative media offer a way through the impasse into the future, but lack the credibility offered by ratings data. Courage will be required from advertisers and their media planner/buyers to break these constraints and make optimum use of emerging, niche and community media.

Mark Balnaves and Duane Varan: Beyond Exposure: Interactive Television and the New Media Currency
Significant effort in advertising is directed towards maximising exposure — to ensure that, for example, a broadcast audience is exposed to an optimum number of messages in a media planning schedule. ‘Interactivity’ as it is emerging, however, has a dramatic effect on traditional assumptions about frequency and reach (how many times the message is repeated and how extensively it is received). Interactivity potentially shifts choice back to the audience, allowing a ‘bypassing’ of attempts to repeat messages. Audiences, given the choice, simply will avoid advertisements that are designed primarily for exposure. Audiences in an environment where they can personalise and customise a medium according to their preferences — and indeed become ‘producers’ of content themselves — will be looking for content that is designed for elaboration, rather than only repetition. There is a background to this emerging trend and it is explored in this paper.

General Articles

Grahame Griffin: The City, the Suburb, the Community and the Local Press: A Gold Coast Case Study
Local and suburban newspapers have not generally received a ‘good press’, at least in the relevant academic literature. This article argues that it is time to reconsider the roles and responsibilities of these newspapers in the light of discussions surrounding the nature of community and of community cohesion and conservatism, as well as the relationship of the local to the global. A case study of two Gold Coast newspapers — a suburban and a daily — concludes that, while the suburban paper relies on traditional hard news journalism with little overt recognition of community, the daily pursues a ‘sometimes obsessive’ search for local meaning, image and identity.

Christine Morris: Indigenising the Effects of Media Globalisation
This article is meant to address an international Indigenous audience and has already been presented at several international forums. The intention of the article is to show the ways in which Indigenous communities in Australia are using technology to promote democratic communication and to challenge global media hegemony perpetuated not only by media moguls but also by those who claim to challenge media on behalf of the oppressed. This tyranny of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices not only emanates from the hegemonic racism of mainstream society, but Fanon’s concept of the comprador bourgeoisie, whom I posit are the ‘desired reflective images and voices’ — the image and voice most palatable to Australia’s media and power structure.

Michael Keane: Facing off on the Final Frontier: The WTO Accession and the Rebranding of China's National Champions
This paper examines ramifications of China’s entry into the World Trade Organis ation (WTO) in the context of the increasing internationalisation of its audio-visual industry landscape. The paper begins with a discussion of the concept of sovereignty. This is juxtaposed against the proposition advanced by US content industry spokesperson Jack Valenti that liberalisation of markets and openness to ‘ideas’ is in China’s greater interest. The point is made that a leap of faith between open markets and the ‘marketplace of ideas’ is viewed suspiciously by Chinese elites, despite their declaration that WTO accession represents a win–win outcome for the Chinese nation. The second section of the paper looks at how China might respond to reassert cultural sovereignty through industry development, in particular the use of branding and localisation. The conclusion reframes the utility of the idea of sovereignty in the light of China’s celebration of national champions.

Chu Yiu-wai: Developing Local Popular Songs in Hong Kong: A Study of the All Cantonese Pop Music Station Format
Taking the case of the All Cantonese Pop Music Station, launched by Commercial Radio of Hong Kong in the late 1980s, this paper investigates the intricate relations among cultural policy, broadcasting institutions and the music industry. Through analysis of this empirical case, the complex relationship between cultural policy and the development of local pop songs is also examined. The major theoretical thrust tackles the important question of whether protective cultural policies are culturally limiting or integral to creating discursive space for indigenous culture to develop.