- definition: an individual or collective group of people who read or consume any media text
Importance:
- without audience= no media
- no audience= no profit
Mass media becoming competitive to attract more and more audiences in different ways and stay profitable
Impact of new technology audiences
Old media:
- used to have high audience numbers, now work harder to maintain audience numbers
Digital technology: - led to an increasing uncertainty over how we define an audience
Fragmented audience
- the division of audiences into smaller groups due to the variety of media outlets
- example: newspapers and magazines - view hard copy and online version
- aim: hit as many people as possible/sell more copies/generate a large audience
How do industries continue to make money?
- free apps - have adverts, unless you pay to remove ads
- website and search engines target you with ads whilst you consume 'free online' version of your media product
- these adverts are carefully constructed and selected for the primary audience for each text
- newspaper- printing less copies and switching to online distribution can reduce production costs
Types of audience:
Mass audience
- termed 'broadcast audience'
- people who consume mainstream or popular texts such as soaps or sitcoms
- media and communication that targets a very large group of people
Niche audience
- smaller but influential
- select group of people with a very unique interest
Reasons to create media texts:
- generate money
- genres are used to appeal to a specific audience
- used to bring in adverts/advertisers - generate money
- subscription services use pays monthly schemes to generate income
Psychographics
- every advertiser wants to target a particular type of audience
- media companies produce texts that target a particular 'type' of audience
- commercial media - finding generated by advertising revenue
- products define their audience with psychographic profile
- aspirers
- succeeders
- resigned
- explorers
- strugglers
- reformers
Demographic profiling
A - higher management, bankers, lawyers, doctors etc
B - middle management, teachers, creative/media people etc
C - office supervisors. junior managers, nurses, white collar jobs etc
C2 - skilled manual workers, plumbers, builders. blue collar jobs etc
D - semiskilled and unskilled manual workers
E - unemployed, students, pensioners, casual workers
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