The ways of knowing modern audiences, broadcast ratings, is now big billion dollar business, with Google in alliance with Nielsen, one of the world's leading media researchers, to literally auction audiences off to the highest bidder. Ironically, 'the black box' of survey and sampling methodology that delivers audiences remains a mystery to most, just as...

The much touted transformations of television not only towards more television but more ways of accessing television presents particular challenges for 'business as usual' in audience measurement, particularly with respect to the trade-offs involved in establishing and maintaining broadcast ratings conventions. The gradual erosion of the standard broadcast model and the evolution of niche broadcasters...

Prepared for the Australian Broadcasting Authority by Ben Goldsmith, Julian Thomas, Tom O'Regan and Stuart Cunningham, The Future for Local Content: Options for Emerging Technologies considers the cultural and social objectives of media policy in the context of technological change - including the transition to digital transmission, multichanneling and datacasting.