The Politics of Enjoyment: Competing Audience Measurement Systems in Britain, 1950–1980

Abstract

The measurement, analysis and research of broadcast audiences have a history reaching back to the origins of commercial radio during the 1920s. With the arrival of television during the 1930s, methods that had been developed in the radio industry were quickly adapted to measure audiences for television broadcasts (Beville, 1996; Buzzard, 1999; Robinson, 1947). Early practitioners of broadcast audience measurement systems realized that their activities had a bearing on the foundations of a new type of media-oriented democracy, since programme ratings could enable or disable consumer choice between programmes and broadcasting stations, and promote or distort the democratic process by channelling advertising sponsorship into the hands of broadcasting stations that held specific political views. Given the recent debates over the measurement of online audiences for informational content and entertainment, it is worth revisiting the technical complications and socio-theoretical rivalries that accompanied the introduction of audience measurement systems from the 1930s onwards (Balnaves and O’Regan, 2002; Bermejo, 2009; Napoli, 2003: pp. 6–10; Webster, Phalen and Lichty, 2000: pp. 1–27).