C.E. Hooper

Not to be confused with the defunct company of the same name.

The C. E. Hooper Company was an American company which measured radio and television ratings during the "Golden Age" of radio. Founded in 1934 by Claude E. Hooper (1898-1954), the company provided information on the most popular radio shows of the era.

History
Claude E. Hooper became well known for his radio audience measurement systems, Hooper Ratings or "Hooperatings". Before beginning work in radio measurement, Hooper was an auditor of magazine circulation.[3] Hooper worked within the market research organization of Daniel Starch until 1934 when he left to start a research company with colleague Montgomery Clark, Clark-Hooper; in the fall of 1934 the company launched syndicated radio measurement services in 16 cities.[1] Clark left the business in 1938 and Hooper continued the firm as C. E. Hooper, Inc.

The survey method employed by Hooper was designed with the help of George Gallup, whose input Hooper later acknowledged as key. It differed from the method being used by the advertising industry service, the Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting (CAB); in particular, Clark-Hooper's method involved contacting listeners during the shows being analyzed as opposed to the following day. In the industry, the method was dubbed "telephone coincidence"; it superseded CAB's earlier method ("telephone recall") as the industry standard, and Hooper's prevalence eventually led to the 1946 dissolution of CAB.

In 1948, as the radio networks began venturing into television, Hooper began measuring TV ratings as well. In February 1950, the company was bought by competitor A.C. Nielsen.

During the late 1940s the catchphrase "How's your Hooper?" was a well-known allusion to the size of a series' audience.

Revival
In 2000, a major shift happened in broadcasting as the Nielsen Company announced that they were no longer counting the ratings for ABN, RKO, and DuMont. John Clark (great-grandson of Montgomery Clark) and Kaye Hooper (great-granddaughter of C.E. Hooper) announced plans to relaunch C.E. Hooper, and they would be doing the counting for ABN, RKO, and DuMont. In 2006, Nielsen announced that they would no longer count the ratings for UPN and The WB, after CBS sold UPN back to Viacom and Warner Brothers sold The WB to Turner Broadcasting. Hooper added UPN and The WB to their list of networks for ratings.

Networks that The C. E. Hooper Company does ratings for

 * ABN
 * Acme
 * Dorado Broadcasting Company
 * DuMont
 * Import
 * KTV
 * MyTV
 * Omni
 * Paramount
 * QTV
 * Rainbow Dash Network
 * RKO
 * UPN
 * The WB