- 1. Understandingaudience and target audiences.
2.
- When a media text is being planned, perhaps the most important
question the producers consider is "Does it have an audience?" If
the answer to this is 'no', then there is no point in going any
further!
- Audience research is a major part of any media company, using
questionnaires, focus groups, and comparisons to existing media
texts.
- In researching our audience we have looked at a number of
comparisons to existing media texts.
- We have looked at the consumption habits of our target audience
(other pop videos and media that are target audience would look
at)
- We have used our own experience as young people in terms of
taste and preferences.
- Weve have looked at the different genres of music which are
most popular amongst our age group.
- And we have a good understanding of what our target audience
expects in terms of codes and conventions of our main
products.
- a great deal of time and money is invested by the industry in
finding out if the idea/artist/band will be successful and attract
a lucrative audience.
3. DEMOGRAPHIC CHART
- A method of categorising a potential audience is known
asdemographics . This initially highlights the spending power of an
audience.
- A Top management, bankers, lawyers, doctors and other
professionals
- B Middle management, teachers, many 'creatives' e.g. graphic
designers, PR, Journalists etc
- C1 Office supervisors, junior managers, nurses, specialist
clerical staff etc
- C2 Skilled workers, tradespersons (white collar) Plumbers,
electricians
- D Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers (blue collar)
- E Unemployed, students, pensioners, casual workers
- Dependingon the genre of music, the target audience could be
found form a range of these demographic groups
4.
- There are other categories that divide up a target
audience:
- Arguably, these are the most important categories for choosing
a target audience.
- At the moment, the commercial charts are dominated by RnB
soraceis an important one in this situation.
- For example, Lady Gagas target audience is:young, men, women,
homosexuals,
- Locationhas been important for associating a genre.
- Despite this we must remember that musical taste is a very
personal thing. And younger audiences may choose music as a way of
showing they belong to a group, so a sense of belonging to a
community or choose a music of a more underground nature to
highlight their growing sense of individualism.
5.
- Record companies alsoconsider very carefully how that audience
might react to, or engage with, the text/product they intend to
produce.
- The following are all factors in analysing or predicting this
reaction.
- AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT This describes how an audience interacts
with a media text. Different people react in different ways to the
same text.
- AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS These are the advance ideas an audience
may have about a text. This particularly applies to genre pieces.
Don't forget that producers often play with or deliberately shatter
audience expectations.
- AUDIENCE FOREKNOWLEDGE This is the definite information (rather
than the vague expectations) which an audience brings to a media
product.
- AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION This is the way in which audiences feel
themselves connected to a particular media text, in that they feel
it directly expresses their attitude or lifestyle.(Attitude,
lyrics, clothes, direct address)
- AUDIENCEPLACE MENT This is the range of strategies media
producers use to directly target a particular audience and make
them feel that the media text is specially 'for them'. (way in
which you make our audience react: direct address, with T.V bards
also lyrics, creating relationships with audience).
- AUDIENCE RESEARCH Measuring an audience is very important to
all media institutions. Research is done at all stages of
production of a media text, and, once produced, audience will be
continually monitored.
- People are going to react to your product in different
ways.
6. CREATING AUDIENCE
- Once a media text has been made, its producers need to ensure
that it reaches the audience it is intended for. All media texts
will have some sort of marketing campaign attached to them.
Elements of this might include
- promotional interviews (e.g. stars appearing on chat
shows)
- tie-in campaigns (e.g. a blockbuster movie using McDonalds
meals)
- merchandising (t-shirts, baseball caps, key rings)
- Marketing campaigns are intended to create awareness of a media
text. Once that awareness has been created, hopefully audiences
will come flocking in their hundreds of millions.
- Promotion :promotional video, CD cover and back cover, advert
in magazine (tour),
- Radio:Radio one coverage: scheduling may be an issue, but would
be a good place to promote album. As well as xfm, capital, mercury,
(local Guilford radio) eagle
- Music Magazines:such as NME, Kerrang, Q the music,
Blender.
- She would appear on things like the Saturday/Friday night
project..
- Podcasts, promotional
website,www.nenahmusic.comandwww.myspace.comnenahmusic
- Itunes for single and album cover, youtube, Spotify, last.fm,
Amazon mp3 and other internet music sites.
- Merchandising : t-shirts for gigs (with tour dates)
- Viral Marketing Campaign :little online programme where you can
remix the track yourself
7. 8. COUNTING AUDIENCE
- Radio/TVMeasuring the number of viewers and listeners for a
TV/Radio programme or whole station's output is a complex business.
Generally, an audience research agency (e.g. BARB) will select a
sample of the population and monitor their viewing and listening
habits over the space of 7 days. The data gained is then
extrapolated to cover the whole population, based on the percentage
sample. It is by no means an accurate science. The numbers obtained
are known as theviewing figuresorratings .
- Music channels our video would be shown on: MTV,
9.
- In order to evaluate and discuss our audience reactions and
feedback we have considered several theoretical approaches.
- The Hypodermic Needle theory:
- Basically, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the
information from a text passes into the mass consciousness of the
audienceunmediated , i.e. the experience, intelligence and opinion
of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the
text.
- This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents,
politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain
groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts
(shootem up films in the 1980s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear
that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will
then act them out themselves.
- The Hypodermic model quickly proved too clumsy for media
researchers seeking to more precisely explain the relationship
between audience and text.
10. The Two-Step Flow
- Suggested that the information does not flow directly from the
text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered
through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less
active associates, over whom they have influence.
11. Uses and Gratifications:Katz and Blumler
- Suggested that media texts had the following functions for
individuals and society:
-
-
- Correlation emotional responses, story told by the performer,
something for audience to relate to, distrust (direct address from
band members).
12.
- Researchers expanded this theory and published their own in
1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the
following purposes (i.e. uses and gratifications):
- Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.
- Personal Relationships- using the media for emotional and other
interaction, e.g. substituting soap operas for family life
- Personal Identity- finding yourself reflected in texts,
learning behaviour and values from texts
- Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living
e.g.) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains
- Since then, the list of Uses and Gratifications has been
extended, particularly as new media forms have come along (e.g.
video games, the internet)
13. Reception Theory
- Extending the concept of an active audience still further, in
the 1980s and 1990s a lot of work was done on the way individuals
received and interpreted a text, and how their individual
circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their
reading. This work was based onStuart Hall's encoding/decodingmodel
of the relationship between text and audience -the text is encoded
by the producer, and decoded by the reader , and there may be major
differences between two different readings of the same code.
However, by using recognised codes and conventions, and by drawing
upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and
use of stars, the producers canpositionthe audience and thus create
a certain amount of agreement on what the code means. This is known
as apreferredreading.
14.
- Anaberrantreading:( people rejecting it)
- Anegotiatedreading:(Where the reaction is not whats expected; a
new reaction develops from it)
15. Extra info
- Unless you have a youtube account, you can not comment on the
videos.
- Leave space for commentsto reference and relate to:Audience
Feedback
- Feedback from questionnaire
- Entertainment: pace of cuts, movement of performance, (dancers
and artist).