Types of Audience

Types of audience

Mass audience – often termed broadcast audience. Those who consume mainstream or popular texts such as soaps or sitcoms.

Niche audience – much smaller but very influential. A niche audience is small, select group of people with a very unique interest.

 Categories

Audiences can be divided into the categories based on social class/grade.

Audience research

Audience research is a major part of any media companies work. They use questionnaires, focus groups, and pre film screenings and spend a great deal of time and money finding out who would be interested in their product.

Demographics

Media producers are interested in:

Income/status

Age

Gender

Race

Location of their potential target market. This is called the demographics. Once they know this (as well as the psychographics) they can start to shape their media text to a group with known viewing habits.

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.

Group A

Lawyers

Doctors

Scientists

Well paid professionals.

Group B

Teachers

Middle management

Fairly well paid professionals

Group C1

Junior management

Bank clerks

Nurses

‘white collar’ professions

Group C2

Plumbers

Electricians

Carpenters

‘blue collar’ professions

Group D

Manual workers such as:

Drivers

Post sorters

Group E

Students

Unemployed

Pensioners