The Big Picture

摘要

A handful of global events - such as the British Royal Wedding on 29 April 2011 - stimulate, for a short time, astonishing levels of global media use. But accurate measurements are elusive. Whilst individual network systems and platforms can gauge traffic on the Internet, estimating the true global terrestrial TV broadcast audience is difficult. Internet blurs viewing habits as people mix devices and access methods. The event received great advance buzz (see Figure) but to some criticism, pre-event estimates1 by UK minister Jeremy Hunt of 2 billion TV audience have been accepted by many commentators and media outlets as unquestioned fact.