From Audimeter to Big Data: Early TV Ratings Technologies and the Mechanization/Domestication of Consumer Surveillance

• In Event: Histories of Veracity

Abstract

In the US, the rise of mass media was concurrent with the growth of the consumer information economy; yet the role that radio and early television played in shaping modern consumer surveillance culture is often overlooked. In this paper, I recuperate a history of experimental mechanized TV ratings technologies from the late 1940s, including C.E. Hooper's Programeter and C.A.B.'s Radio Graph. The successes and failures of these devices demonstrate the problematic epistemologies of veracity that are inherent to mechanized, data-driven consumer research. These devices also paved the way for the dominance of automated audience measurement, with the success Nielsen's audimeter and ARB's arbitron in the 1950s. By pairing digital media theory and technology studies with archival research, I examine how these overlooked TV ratings devices served as precursors to contemporary regimes of big data and also normalized consumer surveillance in the home.

First, drawing on Lisa Gitelman's and Rob Kitchin's work on epistemologies of big data, I argue the advent of mechanized audience measurement devices in the late 1940s/1950s made audience data big, establishing a precursory reliance on technological veracity and consumer surveillance that persists today. Mechanized meters kept a minute-by-minute time stamped record of tuning, 24 hours a day. This afforded the collection of diagnostic information and a wider array of audience analytics, including program flow, turnover, and frequency. Mechanization also created a data store, which meant that the record could be inspected and rejected and that data could be used for retroactive/predictive analysis. Second, I argue that the installation of mechanized TV ratings devices in homes (the first form of technological surveillance in the domestic space) normalized the private sphere as an appropriate domain of consumer research. In fact, the success of these devices motivated ratings industry experiments with out of the box audience measurement systems in the home, including Nielsen's electronic seat cushions which were installed in panelists' living room furniture. Ultimately, by recuperating this early history of TV ratings devices, I demonstrate how the US commercial television system was founded on and even formative of so-called contemporary regimes of data veracity and consumer surveillance.

Author

• Jennifer Marie Hessler, U of Califorinia - Santa Barbara