Patent ID: 7647605

Claim:
A noninvasive audience measurement system for collecting program identifying data associated with a program which is transmitted from a signal source and to which a receiver is tuned without physically contacting electronics of the receiver, the audience measurement system comprising: a code reader to noninvasively read a program identification code associated with the program to which the receiver is tuned without physically contacting the electronics of the receiver; a prompter responsive to the code reader to prompt a user of the receiver to manually enter a channel identifier identifying the currently tuned program without changing the channel if the reader was not able to read the program identification code; a channel detector to collect the channel identifier which is manually entered by the user of the receiver, the channel identifier being collected without physically contacting the electronics of the receiver; a timestamper to associate a time with the program identification code and/or the channel identifier to create a time-stamped program identification code and/or a time-stamped channel identifier; a memory to store the program identification code and/or the channel identifier; and a communication device to forward at least one of the time-stamped program identification code and the time-stamped channel identifier to a remote processing site.