Audience Measurement Services of Canada’s Radio and Television Industries – Meter Methodology

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is an administrative tribunal that regulates and supervises broadcasting and telecommunications in Canada. The CRTC seeks to ensure that Canadians have access to a world-class communication system. This overarching objective is supported by three pillars: create, connect and protect. The CRTC supervises and regulates over 2,000 broadcasters, including TV, AM and FM radio and the companies that bring these services to Canadians.

One of the tools the CRTC uses to assess the performance and health of the radio and television industries and of licensees is audience measurement data that provides insight on the tuning performance of Canada’s radio and television stations and services as well as the performance of specific programs broadcast on these stations and services.

Examples of the types of data that are beneficial to the CRTC in its assessment of performance include viewing/tuning time and share of tuning to radio and television stations, demographic information relating to respondents, program-level viewing data for television, as well as information regarding the stations and their respective markets.

Among the most accurate means currently available to collect radio and television audience measurement data is through Portable People Meter (PPM) technology. PPM technology is a pager-sized device that is carried by a representative panel of Canadians that detects inaudible codes that broadcasters embed in the audio portion of their programming using encoders provided by Numeris. Numeris is the only company licensed to use PPM Technology within Canada and is thus the only broadcast measurement and consumer behaviour data supplier in Canada that provides television and radio audience measurement data through the use of PPM technology.