Channels of Influence: CBC Audience Research and the Canadian Public

Daniel J. Robinson is a Ph.D. candidate in history at York University.

While focusing primarily on the origins and development of audience
research at the CBC, this fine book also provides a commendable
historical account of market research conducted for private radio and
television broadcasters. The story that unfolds, beginning in the 1930s,
examines the work of various marketing companies and their use of
telephone surveys and mailed questionnaires to determine radio-audience
“ratings.” Flawed survey methods, combined with suspicions among CBC
staffers that these commercial ratings firms deliberately underreported
CBC audiences in order to undermine public radio, resulted in the
CBC’s establishing its own Bureau of Audience Research in 1954. The
remainder of the book discusses the technological innovations (e.g.,
focus groups, panels, image studies) that took place within
CBC-administered audience research until the 1990s. (While Eaman cites
the many Canadians with graduate training in psychology and sociology
who worked for the CBC, the reader is left to wonder what theories or
methodologies from these disciplines shaped their understanding of
audience research and consumer behaviour.) What most concerns Eaman is
the conceptual innovation needed to accompany these technological
advances; a more democratic application of audience research would see
it transcend its prior functions of determining audience size and
gauging public feedback on existing shows, and instead allow popular
input to help determine actual programming.