Audience measurement system for digital television

A television audience measurement system for identifying a viewer selected television program from among a plurality of television programs broadcast as a time division multiplexed sequence of data packets in a broadcast channel, the viewer selected television program being displayed on a television display in a statistically selected location, the television audience measurement system comprising:

• receiving means for receiving the time division multiplexed sequence of data packets in the broadcast channel;
• acquiring means for acquiring an audio portion of the viewer selected television program;
• recovering means for recovering audio components respectively corresponding to the television programs contained in the sequence of data packets;
• and,
• comparing means for comparing the audio components to the audio portion in order to determine the viewer selected television program.

A television audience measurement system for measuring viewing of a television program viewed on digital television located in a statistically selected site comprising:

• detecting means for detecting an audio code embedded in the television program in order to identify the television program;
• extracting means for extracting an audio signature from the television program in order to identify the televsion program;
• a software agent arranged to identify the television program;
• and,
• selecting means for selecting at least one of the detecting means, the extracting means, and the software agent in order to identify the television program.

A method of identifying a television program selected by a viewer from a set of television programs broadcast as multiplexed data packets in a viewer selected broadcast channel, the viewer selected television program being displayed on a display portion of an apparatus tuned to the viewer selected broadcast channel, the method comprising the steps of:

• a) determining the viewer selected broadcast channel;
• b) acquiring an audio portion of the viewer selected television program;
• c) selecting an audio component associated with one of the set of television programs broadcast in the viewer selected broadcast channel;
• d) comparing the audio portion with the audio component in order to determine whether the audio portion and the audio component match;
• e) if the audio portion and the audio component match, storing a tuning record from at least one of the audio portion and the audio component;
• and,
• f) if the audio portion and the audio component do not match, repeating steps (c) through (f) until either a match is found or the set of television programs is exhausted.

A method of identifying a viewer selected television program from among a plurality of time overlapped television programs broadcast in a viewer selected broadcast channel, wherein the viewer selected television program is displayed in a first window of a multi-window television display, wherein a file is also broadcast in the viewer selected channel so as to be time overlapped with the viewer selected television program, wherein the viewer selected television program and the data file contain respective labels, wherein material from the file is displayed in a second window of the multi-window display, and wherein the method comprises the steps of:

• a) reading, from the file, the respective file label and an identifying datum;
• b) finding the television program label associated with the respective file label;
• and,
• c) storing a time-stamped record comprising the identifying datum.

A software agent stored in memory associated with digital television equipment, wherein the software agent is arranged to acquire television audience measurement data relative to the digital television equipment, the software agent comprising:

• first logging means for logging a television program identification datum identifying a television program selected for viewing on the digital television equipment;
• second logging means for logging an identification datum associated with data corresponding to the television program selected for viewing on the digital television equipment;
• and,
• third logging means for logging an Internet identification datum associated with an Internet task of the digital television equipment.