Since most of the Venezuelan media, as measured by audience, is controlled by the opposition in Venezuela, that has been the main theme in the Venezuelan media lately.
The New York attorney general's office said Tuesday that it was opening an investigation into the way that Arbitron, which measures audiences for radio stations, is deploying devices called personal people meters.
In another story ("But Who's Counting?"), I describe how the absence of common tools for measuring the size of online audiences is threatening the future health of media, as print and broadcast television and radio shrink in importance: "No one really knows how many people visit websites.
Media Metrix mmxi is in the business of measuring audience on the Internet.
And if one measure of shows for young audiences is how much adults will suffer, well, "Ballerina Swan" is a mostly painless 50 minutes.
But thousands of others -- among them, the CBS Corporation owns about 160 radio stations and has a policy against streaming audio -- have abstained, in part because they want to be able to measure audiences accurately.
"This is the first step," Lee said, noting that there will be more analytics added over time to help measure "what pins audiences are resonating most with," among other things.
The uproar around the case has provided a compelling narrative to broadcast outlets in the midst of November sweeps month, when their audiences are measured.
It is not possible to accurately compare the show's audience with those who watched natural history programming going back further than 15 years, as the way TV audiences are measured changed at the end of 2001.
