Measuring the audiences of television programmes is important, not only for programme makers who want to know how popular each programme is but for advertisers who spend over $100 billion a year worldwide and need to know if they are getting value for money and how to target adverts at specific groups.
 

Michael Baxter is Director of Statistics at Kantar Media, one of the World's largest television audience monitoring firms.  He is a chartered statistician, a member of the National Statistics Advisory Group and a past chairman of the Official Statistics Section of the Royal Statistical Society.