Audiences

Audience

Audience - An individual or group of people who read or consume any text
                - Al texts made around an audience, When the film is being made, it is important to think about whether a film has an audience, and if not why not.
                Audiences also bring in money and therefore profit to a company.

Demographic audience - The audiences age, race, gender, class/status, nationality
Psychographic audience - the audiences interest, beliefs, and hobbies.

Without audience there would be no media.
Film makes want to make a profit. But, profit - no audience = no profit
The mass media is becoming more competitive,  so film makes have tried to attract audiences in different ways in order to still maintain a profit.

How audiences use media and the gratification they receive from it
The belief that audiences passively receive messages does not exist anymore
Two theorists Katz and Blumler discovered from their research into audience behaviour that audiences use media texts for a variety of reasons:

1. Information
finding out about events, satisfying curiosity and gaining a sense of security.

E.g.: newspapers

2. Personal Identity
reinforcement for personal values, finding models of behaviour into peoples incite into themselves.

EG: Facebook, Twitter (add people you are interested in) 



3. Integration and social interaction
incite into circumstances of others, social, empathy, identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging, enabling you to connect with friends and family.

E.g. and TV soap East Enders or Coronation Street


Mass Audience - often termed 'broadcast audience'. Those who consume mainstream media or popular texts like soaps and sitcoms. Media and communication that targets large groups of people like men, women, children, adults, etc.

Examples or mass audience films are - Ice Age, Top Gear, Friends,  Harry potter films, 007 Films, Star Wars.






Niche Audience - A much smaller but very influential group of films or TV dramas. A niche market is a very small, select group of people with a very unique interest.

Examples are: Racecar engineering, Sumarine film, This is England.

















The Impact of New Technology on Audiences

Old media (TV, Print, Radio) which have used high audience numbers, have had to work harder in order to maintain their high audiences

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




















Fragmented audience - audience that has become divided


Michael Winterbottom
He is a person a director who specialises in many niche films like: 24 hour party people and Butterfly Kiss.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0935863/