Telescope

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Teleskopie was a joint venture between the market research institute infas from Bad Godesberg and the Institute for Demoskopie Allensbach , which collected the ratings for television in Germany on behalf of ARD and ZDF from 1975 to 1984 . The current follow-up project is GfK TV Research on behalf of the TV Research Working Group . The company name Teleskopie is an outdated synonym for electronic television metering, for which the term telemetry is currently used .

The company facsimile operation 1975 a TV Panel with 1,200 representative for the Federal Republic by means of randomly selected private households . The clients were the consortium of the public broadcasting corporations of the Federal Republic of Germany (ARD), the advertising television companies merged in the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Rundfunkwerbung (ARW) and the Second German Television. The television behavior of people older than three years was measured to the second. Thus, the individual visual behavior was no longer reconstructed afterwards, which ruled out memory errors. The first electronic measuring device was supplied by the Heidelberg company Teldix. The aim was to record all TV programs used by a test household. The data was collected during the night via the telephone network via modem transmission and stored in a database.

The Teleskomat personal measuring device had two advantages. It contained a TV tuner that replaced the functionality of the television set and was therefore very precisely measurable. In order to have a synchronous time in Germany, the then ultra-modern quartz clocks were used. Second, each person had their own key that they could use to log in and out. In this way, the television behavior of a specific person could be assigned. B. Age, gender, consumption habits had further information. For program planning and commercial television such data is much more valuable than the mixed data of an entire household.

In the initial phase, the measuring devices were disproportionately distributed across all federal states. H. Every country received a minimum number of devices, regardless of the population level, so that statistically relevant statements could be made. At the beginning of 1975, further measuring devices were added in the regional states until the full expansion stage was reached. From mid-1975, the data could be transmitted to the institutes at night and analyzed in the morning hours. As a result, preliminary quotas, so-called overnights, were available the next morning, which were initially transmitted to the client by telex .

The forerunner project of Teleskopie was the Infratam company in Wetzlar, which carried out the first continuous quota measurement in Germany for ARD and ZDF from 1963 to 1974. There the television meter, also Tammeter of the British Television Audience Measurement (TAM), was in use. Measurements were already made to the minute, but the results (device switch-on, channel, time) came four weeks later and were only available for the entire television household. In addition, 600 different people were interviewed for each daily program and their judgments were summarized to an average value ( Infratest ).

Gradually, a continuous reporting system was established. First nationally for ARD and ZDF, then for the evening programs of the (regional) ARD and ZDF or for the third programs. In the early years, the household ratings were more important because these percentages were greater than the audience reach. But increasingly, target group data from men, women, adult age groups and children were used more and more for program planning. In 1979 the panel was enlarged to 1,500 households. Secondary devices, televisions with remote control and portable televisions were also recorded. The introduction of ARD Bremen and the expansion of NDR regional information led to a further increase in the panel to 1650 households with around 4000 people aged three and over at the end of 1980. At the time when telescope viewer research was replaced by GfK TV research in early 1985, the panel had its maximum size of 2,000 households and almost 5,000 individuals. Before the panel was discontinued, the data was freely marketed for some time.

The validity of the measurement in the telescope panel was checked several times. Even then, the question was whether the participating viewers can reliably log in and out with their person key. These coincidence checks (internal coincidental check) showed that the key operation was reliable and the security of the audience numbers was 90 percent. It was also checked whether a longer stay in the panel leads to "television fatigue" or whether guests in the household also register or whether new technologies such as teletext , video recorders and cable TV were measured at the time.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Buß, Wolfgang Darschin: In search of the television audience. A look back at 40 years of continuous audience research. In: Media Perspektiven . ARD advertising, accessed on May 11, 2016 .
  2. ↑ telescope viewer research in Wolfgang J. Koschnick : Standard lexicon for media planning and media research in Germany. Munich, 1995.
  3. ^ Otto Altendorfer: The media system of the Federal Republic of Germany. Westdeutscher Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3531134353 , p. 237.
  4. ↑ Wolf Donner: How television researches its viewers. Each his own button. Die Zeit , January 31, 1975, accessed May 4, 2016 .