The real challenge was to sift out people counted more than once
The campaign, like penicillin, grew out of an unrelated experiment. SRG wanted to see if it could determine with some precision how many Americans interact with all sorts of public media each month.Tom Thomas, co-c.e.o. of SRG, said the need for the figure became obvious during research for pubradio’s Wedding Petticoats the Audience Project, which delivered its report last winter (Current, Jan. 11, 2010).
“We’ve been exploring at SRG for months how might to get at a cross-platform, multimedia audience figure,” Thomas said. “That’s the way we’re talking about what public media is these days: a service that connects with America on multiple platforms. So this is not a new topic.”
Tracking and reporting online usage has significantly improved in recent years, Thomas said. “Now we can get at some sense of the intersection between the online and broadcast audience from site to site,” he said. “There are lots of data points.” With numbers from PBS, NPR, CPB, Arbitron, Nielsen and online reporting agencies, SRG was able to compile a fairly accurate number, he said.
The real challenge was to sift out people counted more than once. “In each potential area of overlap, we find the best reporting and do a ton of calculations” to estimate the folks who, say, watch Frontline, listen to Morning Edition and visit PBS.org. Those formulas included matching PBS’s monthly audience numbers to NPR’s weekly. Nielsen also tracks some multiplatform use.
In all calculations, Thomas said, “we erred on the side of caution,” especially to prevent pubcasting foes from attacking the 170 million figure. In the end, he said, 170 million “feels pretty tight at the moment.” An explanation of how the number was figured is posted on the site and reproduced below.
After House members began their attack on CPB appropriations in November, APM approached SRG and asked whether the unrelated audience calculation could help pubcasting make its case to legislators and the public. “Our sense was, that’s exactly the right way,” Thomas said.
http://www.articlefield.com/120586/kids-will-not-only-learn-how-to-make-the-best-looking/
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