What is an audience?
An individual or collective group of people who read or consume any media text
Examples: Radio listeners, Television viewers, Newspaper and magazine readers, Web traffic on web sites
- Without audiences there would be no media.
- Media organizations produce media texts to make profit- no audience=no profit
- The mass media is becoming more competitive than ever to attract more and more audiences in different ways and stay profitable.
Fragmented audience
The division of audiences into smaller groups due to the variety of media outlets.
EXAMPLE:Newspapers and magazines – you can now view the hard copy AND online version (sometimes free).
The aim is to hit as many people as possible/sell more copies/generate a larger audience. But measuring that audience becomes hard! You may have some people that only look online, some that only read the hard copy, or some that do both!
how do institutions continue to make money?
Nothing in life is free
Free apps always have adverts, unless you pay to remove adds.
Websites and search engines work hard to target you with ads whilst you consume ‘free online’ versions of your media product
These adverts are carefully constructed and selected for the primary audience for each text
Types of Audience
With newspapers, printing less copies and switching to online distribution can reduce production costs. (see your local newspaper)
- Mass audience :often termed ‘broadcast audience’. Those who consume mainstream or popular texts such as soaps or sitcoms. Media and communication that targets a very large group of people (women, men, children, adults etc)
- Niche audience: much smaller but very influential. A niche audience is a small, select group of people with a very unique interest.
Psychographics
Every advertiser wants to target a particular type of audience. Therefore, media companies produce texts that target a particular ‘type’ of audience.
In terms of commercial media, much of their funding is generated by advertising revenue. Their product needs to appeal to a specific type of audience so that advertisers will pay to promote their product.
Most media products can define their ‘typical’ audience member, often with a psychographic profile.
Broadcasting
when a distribution of audio and video contents disperses and audience by any audio/video mass communication medium, but sometimes one use electromagnetic radiation.
