Definition from the Petit Robert (1993): registered trade name; people meter linked to the telephone network enabling the measurement of the audience of various television networks. It is also the name of the television audience and household study that existed from 1981 to 1988, across a national panel of 1,000 households equipped with a people meter. In 1989, Médiamétrie perfected the system by equipping the households with push-button devices that enabled individual audience measurement (see: Médiamat). Audimat is now also used generically to describe a system for measuring the audiences of television and even other media.