1. An apparatus for use in recognizing the content of a media program, the apparatus comprising: processing circuitry configured to digitize an audio representation of a media program to form a digitized audio representation of the media program; a memory configured to store the digitized audio representation of the media program; and a processor communicatively connected to the memory, the processor configured to: divide the digitized audio representation into time domain blocks of a prescribed number of samples; smooth the time domain blocks using a filter; convert the smoothed time domain blocks into frequency domain blocks, wherein the smoothed time domain blocks are represented by frequency coefficients; filter each first frequency domain representation of blocks of the media program using a plurality of filters to develop a respective second frequency domain representation of each of the blocks of the media program, the second frequency domain representation of each of the blocks having a reduced number of frequency coefficients with respect to the first frequency domain representation; group frequency coefficients of the second frequency domain representation of the blocks to form frequency coefficient segments; select a plurality of the segments as representing the media program; compare the selected segments to frequency coefficient segments of stored programs to provide corresponding matching scores; and determine the media program using the matching scores.