An AC burst having a length depending upon the response chosen by the participant is put on a telephone line regardless of the operating state thereof, at a frequency outside of the telephone band. At the central telephone station the bursts are decoded and response signals corresponding to each answer are summed. The resulting totals are transmitted via private lines to a central computing station where the totals corresponding to a given answer are again added. For television channel polling, a control signal signifying an operative television receiver is also put on the telephone line and, at the central computing station computer circuits compute the percentage of television sets tuned to any given channel.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS:
This application is a continuation-in-part application of my application Ser. No. 170,003, filed Aug. 9, 1971, now abandoned.
A video program is broadcast to different video display sets in a broadcast reception area for display at the discretion of television viewers in that area. In order to determine the reaction of television viewers to the displayed broadcast video program, a determination of a relative number of sets responding to the particular broadcast is made. A display of the broadcast video program is provided with a pictorial representation of the relative number of responding sets. Potentially participating sets may be provided with a facility for registering any of a predetermined number of different types of viewer reactions to the broadcast video program. A display of the broadcast video program may be provided with a facility for displaying a number of pictorial representations corresponding to the predetermined number of different types of viewer reactions for individually indicating each viewer reaction type. Viewer reactions received through the registering facility may be displayed in the display of the broadcast video program according to reaction type through the corresponding pictorial representations.
Casting of votes takes place by the dialing of a subscriber number of a stated destination switching center. By omitting establishing a connection to the destination switching center in the source switching center only the appropriate connection requests are summed and, after a predetermined sum value has been reached or after a given length of time has passed since the beginning of the vote taking, the particular sum value is signaled to the destination switching center via the common signal channel.
A method and system for text analysis provides that text messages perceived by a population can be scored to determine the extent to which the messages favor one or more specified positions on a specified issue. A method and system for predicting public opinion based on message scores provides that the extent to which messages favor one or more specified positions can be used to determine the effect on the opinions of a specified population and to determine changes in the percentages of the percent of subpopulations within said specified population which favor said one or more specified positions.
A telephone based automatic audience survey system for polling an audience to obtain data representative of the opinion regarding a question of interest is disclosed having a first means responsive to incoming calls for answering the calls with an analog voice signal that both identifies the telephone based automatic audience survey system and queries a response in regard to the question of interest, and a second means connected to the first means and responsive to the answers provided to the query portions of the analog voice signal for providing data representative of the consensus regarding the question of interest. Third means connected to the second means are operative to display the data in real-time. The third means includes a video character generator, an audio signal generator, and an operator display.
A method and system for text analysis provides that text messages perceived by a population can be scored to determine the extent to which the messages favor one or more specified positions on a specified issue. A method and system for predicting public opinion based on message scores provides that the extent to which messages favor one or more specified positions can be used to determine the effect on the opinions of a specified population and to determine changes in the percentages of the percent of subpopulations within said specified population which favor said one or more specified positions.
