Cronholm, Margareta

Spouse: Tomas Cronholm, retired professor in medical biochemistry at Karolinska Institute

Dear Colleagues,

I left GEAR twice – first time in 1993 and second time in 2007 after the Paris meeting. I suppose that I am the only person in GEAR that had the audience research department closed twice. It is nothing I can recommend, and today there is a new department (again!) in full activity. There might be experienced as a threat to the company board to have a strong and outspoken research department but I am absolutely convinced that open hearted discussions within the PS-company is necessary for future survival. 

After the audience research era I worked as a personal analyst with our Program Director. You could probably call me a senior advisor at the time, a title I however refused to include in my vocabulary. Once a senior advisor always (1-2 years) a senior advisor was my experience and then you are out. I wanted to work another 5-year period before retirement. Within a year I was offered to be a Chief Analyst in the Strategic department where I have spent the last years as responsible for the public service accounts that are delivered to the Ministry of Culture yearly and to introduce a BSC-based (balanced scorecard) model for implementing the company visions into six levels of the organization.

I also established a yearly forum where the DG and her board met the media and journalist professors from universities around Sweden. We let them know about future plans and changes in output and organization and they gave short briefings of their research areas. Some cooperative research has also been established (though much less than I had hoped for initially). I have also worked with the large project on Media History that we presented at the GEAR meeting in Stockholm 1997. More than 40 academic researchers have been involved so far and almost 50 books have been published. The first volume in English was published last summer about the educational obligations for radio and television through out the years (http://cdon.se/b%c3%b6cker/sandin%2c_bengt/neither_fish_nor_fowl_%3a_educational_broadcasting_in_sweden_1930-2000-7335654?gclid=CM66sNPu46wCFZEvmAodMBdAoA). Next year we will publish a volume in English about development in traditional public service areas in Sweden. Than the project will be closed.

 Within 2 months time I will be 65 and then I have decided to leave work. I will still have some obligations to produce audience figures for our Educational branch Utbildningsradion for another 6 months and to see the last volumes of the historical project to be published but then it is full time freedom for me.

 It is now time for my family to be introduced to me! I have been away so much over the years that it is pay back time now to husband, children (two grown up daughters) and their families. I have four grandchildren – two 6 year old, one 4 year old and a eight months old baby that I am very eager to know better. I am also engaged in what is called folks culture or amatory culture. At the moment I am writing song texts and sketches for a revue show. I have also taken courses in flow writing and forum theatre inspired by Augusto Boal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Boal), a vey interesting form of improvisation!

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Dear Peter,

Thank you for the interesting tables about Internet some time ago. as you know I am not Head of the Audience Research any more. My position is now with the Strategic unit in SVT. The Audience Research department has been through seven different reorganisations the last 18 months but seems now to have found its structure. One of my former analysts is the new head, Tomas Lindhé, He is a nice young man and I recommend that you keep in touch with him has well. There are no hard feelings between us or my former group. We cooperate very well. The sad thing is that all qualitative research will be closed. No more progrmme testing, focus groups or whatever. Only quantitative studies for the future. Followlingly the department is minimised to 4 people - perhapts they will be 5 in a near future.

About Internet and Internet use I can inform you that our own studies have changed a bit. We do not ask about access to Internet in our studies any more and not so much in detail about the place of use, as most people in Sweden has access to their own Internet connection we today concentrate on the use of our different services compared to the competitors.

Since the closure of the former audience research department in 1993 we support a time series, Mediebarometer, that we started in 1979 and that was adopted by university of Goteborg . Some years ago the Mediebarometer had a young sibling called Internetbarometer. We support that as well and I warmly recommend you to look at it (though in Swedish). We have earlier calibrated the data with our own and find them just as good and stable. it is however published with quite long delay - The 2006 report was published last summer (June or July). There are no half year figures but an average of the full year only. Internetbarometern does not ask about use in a monthly perspective but daily and weekly use only. Alas Internetbarometern does not ask about use per month - most of its information is on daily basis as the rest of the Mediebarometern.

The figures for 2006 was
Access to Internet at home: 80%
Use of Internet Daily anywhere or at home: 62% or 52%
Weekly use of Internet: At home 69%