Audience

Why are audiences important?

Without audiences there would be no media

Media organisations produce texts to make profit

Uses and Gratifications

The belief that audiences passively receive messages is long gone. Katz and blumer proposed from their research into audiences behaviour that audiences use media texts for a variety of reasons.#

Impact of new technology

Old media (tv, print, radio) which used to have high audience members must now work harder to maintain audience numbers.

Digital technology has also led to an increasing uncertainty over how we define an audience, with the general agreement that a large group of people reading the same thing at the same time is outdated and that audiences are now fragmented.

Fragmented audience

The divison 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 and generate a larger audience. But measuring the audience becomes harder.

So 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.

With newspapers, printing less copies and switching to online distribution can reduce production costs. (see your local newspapers).