Nielsen Media Research on Tuesday postponed the launch of its "people meter" viewer-tracking system, bowing to intense political pressure and what it said were threats from global media conglomerate News Corp. Key Energy Says SEC Initiates Inquiry.
When walking into the hall (which measures at a formidable 571 square meters), the viewer is struck by the immensity of the space that is only heightened by the sharp chalk lines.
Eight of the 14 Hearst magazine Web sites have chat rooms, for example, but they tend to focus on specific subjects, like investing (on the Smart Money site) or the Boy-o-meter, where viewers are asked to rate a boy's good looks (on the Cosmogirl site).
On CNN, whenever the camera caught Palin from the back, a real-time viewer-response meter (of who knows what accuracy) seemed to report that undecided male voters responded favorably to her.
Colleagues note that McCarthy is a shrewd consumer of "O," or opposition research, on the rival candidates he's targeting, and that he hones his message using polls, focus groups, micro-targeting data, and "perception analyzers" — meters that evaluate viewers' split-second reactions to demo tapes.
They are equipped with "people meter" monitors that track the shows viewers watch.
(In 1987, the company switched to a "people meter" system that electronically logged what viewers watched in real time, allowing for more detailed measurements and demographic information).
The data for all these interactions comes from the GOES15 satellite, which measures the sun's X-radiation flux in watts per square meter, before the algorithm converts it to output for viewers' eyes, ears, and body.
Vergence-accommodation distance in meters will help understand a real deterministic situation where the viewer is positioned at a precise distance from the screen where the stereo image is produced.
However, from ground level, this sunset would be obscured by a ridge in the landscape, and the viewer would need to be raised by two meters: another observation platform was needed.
That's a nice set of options for both the publisher and viewer, although I'm far from convinced that running a meter on viewing time is something that fits with viewer behavior.
