For big companies that rely on mass audiences to be profitable, it is important for them to understand what their audiences are attentive to. Companies do this by monitoring audience behavior. They employ methods such as interviews, watch logs, and meters.
I think that there is great importance in understanding what mass audiances are paying attention to and what they think about it. One of the simplest forms of monitoring this is by interviews. Interviews however are a rather inefficient and costly way of gathering information from a large group of people. Companies have tryed other things such as watch logs, where an audience member would keep a log of what they watched on TV, when they did, for how long, etc. This is beter than interviews, but there are still flaws. An audience member may record incorrect information, or they may simply forget to send the log back to the company that gave it to them in the first place. Perhaps most efficient are meters. Portable meters are devices that can track what an audience member is watching in any place. This alleviates the need to keep track of everything, and increases accuracy.
With all of these methods that companies use to try and better understand the focus of their widespread audiences, I think it is clear that this information is very valuable to these companies. For example, they might find that people are more likely to pay attention to a specific ad if they are in a social enviroment like a bar. Or maybe that people are more likely to change the channel when an ad comes on at a certain point in the day. Companies can do a lot with this information. They can place advertisements and content in places that is more fitting and more profitable according to the data they have collected by rating the broadcast audience behavior, and that is why I think that rating broadcast audience behavior is important for companies.
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