Is TV just an electronic wallpaper?

Press, 23 July 1986, Page 16

Is TV just an electronic wallpaper?

Researchers watching Britons watching television have discovered that many “viewers” are not watching at all!

By

KARL VICK

It may seem a strange twist — a television set that watches you. They do exist, however. Just ask a handful of families in Britain; they will tell you. It is all part of a landmark research project launched by the Independent Broadcasting Authority in which 20 typical English families traded in their television sets for experimental, one-metre-high consoles. While the appliances look and act like normal tubes, they are nevertheless equipped with candid cameras that monitor viewers’ behaviour from the moment they turn on the set.

The result? A picture tube’s view of life. Children leaping, crawliing and somersaulting across living rooms. Parents yawning. A man heaving himself to his feet and scratching under his arm before walking out of sight. It is simply England enjoying a favourite pas-

time — watching, television. "But do you realize how Orwellian this whole thing is?” a professor asks. Sure, but can something be both Orwellian and this funny? The tapes are a stitch, as British telly fans will tell you. No one person has screened all of the hundreds of hours of videotape so far (the consoles also contain hidden VCRs), but clips from the tapes were aired on British television recently on “A Part of the Furniture,” the first segment in a series of shows on the wonderful world of TV. Barrie Gunter, a senior research officer for the 1.8. A., has also shown several reels from the project, which, according to him, is being carried out for several reasons — specifically to determine how much attention viewers pay to television commercials and to grade the effects of a new ratings system called the People Meter, considered to be more advanced than the Nielsens. But the hidden camera, as Gunter’s private reel suggests, may be more

conspicuous than researchers might hope. A girl on Gunter’s tape (mostly taken from people watching newscasts) climbs off a sofa, puts her face to the lens and says: “Hello. I know you’re looking.”

She moves her head to speak directly into the “hidden” microphone. “This is a great television programme. You know that, don’t you?” Gunter, however, says this is unusual behaviour. He says the first round of consoles were in people’s homes for 10 days, but that after the first day or so, people “seem to relax and behave fairly normally fairly rapidly.” After addressing her television, for instance, the girl walked back to her sofa, glanced down at her baby she was obviously supposed to be looking after, and slipped out of the room.

Ask any researcher. Leaving a room with the TV running is about as natural as behaviour gets.

The typical television plays to an empty room about 20 per cent of the time it is on, according to studies done in Britain and the United States. Another 20 to 30 per cent of

the time, people are in the room with the TV, but are ignoring it On the specific question of how closely people watch the news, the answer appears to be, not very. Much of the humour in Gunter’s sample tape resides in the contrast between the urgency of the newscast's opening themes and the bored expressions of the viewers. One woman, slouched in a recliner, pulls her hands down her face and yawns. A psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts, ; Dan Anderson, has published three papers on his findings using time-lapse photography. | One concerns ‘where people sit when they watch TV. In general, he found, the younger you are, the closer you sit This appears to be because adults prefer to sit on furniture. Kids, on the other hand, do not mind sitting on the floor if that is where they get the best view of the set and younger kids often decide the best view of . all Is about eight centimetres from the screen. People also watch TV differently at different ages.

“Pre-schoolers actually

look at the TV much less than school-age children when they're in the room with it,” he says. "Schoolage children, on the other hand, pay a lot more attention to it than do adults.” Gunter says that when adults are engrossed in a programme, “they are quite rigid. Then when the commercial comes on they are scratching and looking around.” Anderson agrees, but also has an explanation for the moments — we have all had them —- when you realise you were not watching the programme but have looked up to watch a commercial. “The change in sound is a cue to look,” he says. Commericals lie at the heart of reverse viewing research. How much attention pay to ads was the question that inspired Charles Allen to perform his pioneering research at the University of Oklahoma in the early 19605. Anderson says Allen published only one article on his findings, however, preferring to peddle them to advertising concerns. Similarly, the current British study started out as a check on the People Meter.

The People Meter is considered an advance on A. C. Nielsen’s traditional Audlmeter and diary system. The Audlmeter, attached to the back of a TV, registers only whether a set is on and the channel turned — not whether anyone is in the room. Its data is supplemented by the diary, a little pamphlet In which a viewer notes (often from memory) what programmes were watched and by whom. The People Meter does both at once. Basically a little pad like a remote control, it rests in the hand of the viewer who registers his presence and others’ by punching buttons. Whether people are in fact doing that every time they sit down was a principal reason the British developed their camera-in-the-TV. What they have found, of course, is that it almost does not matter. Whether people are in the room or not, and whether they have pushed their button on the People Meter, chances are eVen that they are not watching anyway. —Entertainment News Service; Los Angeles Times Syndicate.