Essential McLuhan 14 leaders of this company were convinced that some means could be found to substitute facts for much of the guesswork then used in guiding corporate marketing operations. Despite the commercial failure of all methods developed during the first ten years of operation, despite staggering operating losses which twice brought them to the brink of disaster, this group of pioneers persevered—because the great importance of the goal was very clear, and because some of the experiments seemed to show promise. The tone of austere scientific dedication to a noble task is not phoney in any simple sense. The language of “human service” is rooted in the respectable neurotic formula of Adam Smith—public good through private greed—a face-saving device which developed a complex face of its own in the nineteenth century. In other words, the kind of self- deception in the language of “public service” is no longer private, but is vertically and horizontally effective, in the English-speaking world at least. The Rousseauistic formula to get the good society by liquidating “civilization,” or the Marxian formula to get the classless society by liquidating the “middle class,” are psychologically analogous— massive mechanisms of evasion and irresponsibility. Well, the Nielsen Company have now lifted the problem of estimating audience character from the level of conjecture to that of certitude. The advertiser sponsoring any given programme wants to know precisely: (a) Average duration of listening; i.e., “holding power” of the programme. (b) Variations in audience size at each minute during the broadcast— to permit detection of programme elements which cause audience gains or losses, to locate commercials at moments when the audience is high, etc. (c) Whether the programme reaches homes that already use the product, or homes that offer opportunities for conversion of new users. For this purpose the Nielsen Audimeter has been devised, “the graphic recording instrument installed in a radio receiver in a scientifically selected radio home. By recording every twist of the dial, every minute of the day or night, the Audimeter obtains precious radio data not available through any other means.” The Audimeter’s data are then tabulated by “The Nielsen Decoder,” which is only “one of the many mechanized operations which are producing high values for NIELSEN RADIO INDEX clients.” And the installation of audimeters is determined “with utmost care to insure precise proportioning in accordance with a long list of marketing characteristics, including: 1, City size; 2, Family size; 3, Number of rooms; 4, Education; 5, Occupation; 6, Income; 7, Type of dwelling; 8, Number of radio receivers. The characteristics of each N.R.I. home are rechecked monthly, and replacement homes are chosen in a manner which keeps the sample accurately balanced at all times.” Moreover, “relations with N.R.I. homes are maintained on such a sound basis that home turnover is limited largely to unavoidable and normal occurrences (e.g., deaths, divorces, fires, removals).” The direction, as well as the appetitive drive, in this sort of research (the Gallup polls of public opinion are a more obvious but less impressive instance of the same thing) is to