Audience research within the media industry is very important to study the characteristics of target audience for various types of media. An audience is an individual or collective group of people who read or consume any media text for example radio listeners, television viewers, newspaper and magazine readers, web traffic or websites. The audience's for the media industry are important because without anyone being interested in watching, listening or reading the media there would be no media at all. Media organizations produce media texts to make profit if there is no audience there will be no profit. The mass media is becoming more competitive than ever to attract more and more audiences in different ways and stay profitable because now in the media there are many new technologies so (TV, Print and Radio) which used to have high audience numbers must now work harder to maintain audience numbers. It is hard to please an audience within the media industry because of digital technology for example newspapers and magazines can now be viewed on-line and is sometimes free, so media producers need to find out what audience's out there are wanting and how they can be attracted by media products.
How are audiences profiled?
Media producers use audience profiling to narrow down their customers or audience to find the target audience. When a media business is creating a new project it is always best to ensure the audience profiling is done before anything else to make sure the product is released to the correct target audience. A target audience is an audience that is most connected and relevant to the media product that the business is trying to sell.
When defining a audience media companies will tend to use these categories;
-socio- economic status
-psycho-graphics
-demographics
-age
-gender
-sexual orientation
-regional identity
-niche
-religious views
-occupation
Socio - economic status research
Socio - economic status research is a method used to find the correct economic class audience for their target audience, it is based of occupation, income and education, for example you have traditionally three classes which are upper class, middle class and working class. Upper class composing of people who are wealthy, well born or both. Middle class consists of people who fall between upper and working class. Working class are people with low paying jobs. The purpose of this research is to find out who they should focus on to put the product across to, for example a building company selling expensive houses would immediately focus its target audience at the upper class individuals. However a media producer is simply trying to find a target audience to advertise to and persuade them to listen, watch or read their media product. The national Readership Survey (NRS) use six categories to define readers of magazines and newspapers within the UK. Capital FM's target audience is young adults so they tend to only play new music out and talk about the latest artists and competitions for example they give away winter time ball tickets away.
Psycho-graphics
Psycho-graphics are very similar to demographics but they deal more with the audience's behavior and personality rather than the work they do. It divides the market into groups based on social class, lifestyle and personality characteristics. It is based on the assumption that the types of products and brands an individual purchases will reflect that persons characteristics and patterns of living. These are the categories they are divided into; Main-streamers, aspirer's, succeeder's, resigned, explorers, struggle's, reformer's. Main-streamers tend to be the largest group which are people who seek security, tend to be domestic, conformist, conventional, sentimental - favor value for money family brands. Aspirer's seek status, Succeeder's seek control, Resigned seek survival, Explorers seek discovery, Struggler's seek escape, Reformer's seek enlightenment. Media producers often use Psycho-graphic graphs to help profile their audience because just like demographic charts, they are much more detailed and offer a larger variety of audience to choose from, for example say a media producer is wanting to create a documentary and the target audience they have set is 16-18 year old going on holiday with their friends without their parents, the producer would choose the reformers group because that contains people who want freedom of restrictions (independence), the producer could also choose the struggler's group because that contains people who are seeking escape. The primary method of information gathering for psycho-graphics is through the use of questionnaires. The idea behind psycho-graphics is that if you understand what type of person is buying your product you can better suit your product to them. Grey Advertising company were the people to develop psycho-graphics.
Mainstream
Mainstream is the word used to describe the majority, things like chart music and blockbuster films are mainstream, products that are aimed at the mainstream are targeting a very large audience, it is something that the majority of people will be aware of, an example of a magazine aimed at the mainstream market would be Top Of The Pops.
Demographics
Demographic information is used in media marketing to classify an audience into age, gender, race and many other categories, demographics are broken into bands depending on people's jobs or status as you can tell from this table below;
For example when demographics are used in the media industry say for a romantic movie it could be aimed at any of the letter codes, this is because it has such a wide audience however some romantic films do not appeal to all audiences such as a heart-warming romance may not appeal to C2 code as they are mainly men so it might not appeal to them or it could. In media, demographics are used to pinpoint potential audience growth and to spot under-performance. Better homes and gardens and Women's day are magazines that reach the female demographic, beyond that there are different types of women. Media companies constantly change their products and the way they advertise them to hit a certain demographic group. If the demographic group they are trying to reach is female magazines and the trend changes the publisher may decide the audience is becoming too old to attract the top advertisers so they will focus on putting younger people on the cover of the magazine and write articles for younger female customers to change the magazine's demographic make-up. In the publishing industry, general interest publications that are designed to appeal to people of all ages and both genders sometimes struggle by trying to attract such a broad audience for example Life and Look magazines struggle with this.
Geo-demographics
Geo-demographics is all about location, the idea behind it is that people living in the same neighborhoods have similar lifestyles and spending tendencies, this allows advertisers to make sure they are targeting the right kind of people, it can highlight important information such as how much money the people in that area are likely to have, it can also show you what kind of people are living in that particular area, this kind of research is most useful to direct mail advertisers.
Age and Gender
Age and Gender play a major part in audience research, a lot of the time people of similar ages have similar interests and disinterests, media producers need to have a target audience and a gender decided first before they can put their product across, they need to know the target audience so they can find out more research into that type of age range. For example if a media company was launching a new TV series on BBC 3 which is going to be a comedy the target audience would be around a young audience that is interested in comedy. The gender is important also for example if a new sports show was launching on the TV the gender would usually be male but many women watch sport as well so getting the age and gender correct when making new media products is very hard and important to ensure the product is making the right profit it should be.
Sexual Orientation and Regional identity
Often on questionnaires for audience research within the media you are asked your sexual orientation and given to chose from Asexual, Bisexual, Heterosexual and Homosexual this is to once again narrow down audience's and to find out about different people's interests and what they want to read, watch or hear it is all about finding audience's personality's which is what psycho-graphics are used for and also this is the same for regional audiences, some people find they like to watch or listen to cultural program's or radio stations for example the radio station Asian Network caters for British Asians that don't always like listening to stations such as Capital FM or TFM also there are many documentary's and channels that cater for different regional identity that talk about different cultures. Religious views are asked for the same reason because the media have to be careful about offending people whether it involves sexual orientation, regional identity and also religious views. Some program's or magazines or radio stations are actually based around religion as well such as Christian Radio and Asian Network and many documentaries are about religion so when asking for audience's religion helps profile what type of program's and radio stations and also magazines are needed to fit every target audience out there.
Niche Audience
Niche audience is the opposite of mainstream it is a much smaller audience but very influential, a niche audience is a small, select group of people with a very unique interest. A media producer may target a niche market in the hope of being able to dominate the market and capturing a large portion of it. For example people that read certain magazines as below;
Occupation
Occupation is also used to find out what interests people have as you can tell a lot by a person's job for example if you are working as a nurse sometimes people enjoy watching programmes such as Holby city, casualty and documentaries about hospitals whereas someone with the job as a fitness instructor may enjoy fitness programmes on healthy eating and exercise and sports magazines and programmes.
How do media producers carry out research into their audience's?
Media producers carry out research into their audiences in many different ways to try and get the best research they can to analyse so they can make sure their media product will be viewed by the correct audience below are examples of how media producers carry out research;
-Primary Research
-Secondary Research
-Quantitative Research
-Qualitative Research
Primary Research
Primary research is an original research method used to research information for a specific purpose in order to obtain original data using methods such as interviews, focus groups, observation and questionnaires. The advantages of primary research is that you can address the target issues, date interpretation is better, the date will be recent you won't be finding any irrelevant research and also proprietary issues. The disadvantages of this method is that it is a high cost collecting data, it is very time consuming, inaccurate feed-backs and also more number of resources are usually required for this method of research.Secondary Research
Secondary research is pre-existing data and information that has already been gathered by other people or organisations this research is often found in books, magazines and on the internet. BARB is also used for secondary research this is a website that measures all TV and showing ratings, this is useful for media companies to find out the ratings of there products. When using secondary research you have to be careful as some of the information may be incorrect or may not have been updated recently.The advantages of secondary research are that you have a wide variety of sources for you to search for also if you found some 2 pieces of information that are different you will be able to tell that one of them is unreliable and incorrect, the disadvantages of this research is that it could be obviously incorrect or not updated but you can tell if the sources say different things.
Quantitative ResearchQuantitative research is a type of research that is based on measurable facts and information, producing numerical and statistical data. In the UK there are 2 major companies carrying out quantitative research relating to the print industry firstly the NRS and secondly the ABC, quantitative research is useful because it allows companies to see how many people are consuming their product. The advantages of quantitative research is that it allows the researcher to measure and analyse data and that the relationship between an independent and dependent variable is studied in detail, this is advantageous because the research is more objective about the findings of the research. The disadvantages of quantitative research that a large sample of the population must be studied the larger the sample of people researched the more statistically accurate the results will be and it can also be very time consuming.
Qualitative ResearchQualitative research is a type of research that is based on opinions, attitudes and preferences rather than hard facts. The aim of qualitative research is to get a better understanding of your audience. There are many methods of qualitative research such as focus groups, face to face interviews and also questionnaires which I will explain more about below. The advantages of qualitative research is that it provides depth and detail, creates openness, simulates people's individual experiences and also it attempts to avoid pre-judgements. The disadvantages are that usually it is very time consuming, less easy to generalise, difficult to make comparisons and also it is very dependant on skills of the researcher.
Audit Bureau Of Circulation (ABC)
Broadcasters Audience Research Board (BARB)
Barb carries out quantitative research, it is also used by many media companies including the BBC and independent broadcasters to commisssion research to find out which programmes and channels are being watched at a specific time, and also a breakdown of the type of people who are watching a particular programme. BARB provides television audience data for all analogue and digital channels received within the UK.The information is obtained from panels of viewers from selected television-owning households, representative of each ITV and BBC region. They tend to use surveys and questionnaires to find out what they need to from the public. The data produced by the research represents the viewing behaviour of over 26 million households within the UK. Barb is jointly owned by the BBC the TP companies, Channel 4, Channel 5, B SKY B and the institute of practitioners and advertising, barb is an industry funded body established in 1981 to give broadcasters and advertisers viewing data at national and regional levels.
The National Readership Survey (NRS)The NRS is a non-profit making organisation that provides information to the industry on who reads what publication. They provide a market breakdown of the readership of each newspaper and magazine according to age,gender,social class and many other demographic and lifestyle characteristics. This information is invaluable to companies and agencies that are planning, selling and buying advertising in the print medium, as the data allows them to target the right audience more effectively. The NRS publishes data covering over 250 newspapers, newspaper supplements and consumer magazines, which is made available to its subscribers via its website.
Radio Joint Audience Research Limited (RAJAR)
RAJAR stands for Radio Joint Audience Rsearch and the purpose is to be in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK, they tend to use quarterly listening, surveys, market trends, volume and mapping. RAJAR was established in 1992, they measure radio stations including all the BBC, UK-licensed and other commercial stations. The RAJAR company is owned by the Commercial Radio Companies Associations (CRCA) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In addition to these organisations, there are a growing number of commerical agencies that offer research and analysis services to media producers, advertisers and regulators. RAJAR carries out quantitative research because there is a wide range of graphs and charts used. They are funded by an annual fee payable in part by the BBC and the balance from the commerical operators via subscription fees payable by the partcipating stations who subscribe to the service. 
Focus Groups
Focus groups are a number of people selected who are seen to represent a certain target audience, they are used a lot in marketing and advertising agencies to test the response of the target audience that the product is being advertised to, to get the best possible feed back they can. Film studio's also use focus groups in preview screenings of major films that will be soon released. This is to ensure the reaction from the audience is positive, there are many times when film directors have listened to the audience's reactions in a focus group and because it hasn't got the right audience reaction the end of the film has been changed. When creating a focus group for people to come to you need to think about where you will hold it, what you are going to talk about to the audience, who you are going to invite and also what you will use to record the focus group.Questionnaires
Questionnaires are used for the public to fill in so media producers can get feedback on specific products, there are many different types of questionnaires and they can often be set out differently for example tick boxes or a box to write answers into. Media producers can use questionnaires on-line or can hand them out, some people tend to use Survey-monkey because it analyses the results of the questionnaires for you once a certain amount of people have answered the questionnaires. They are great for finding out what needs to be changed about the product and whether the media product is aimed at the right target audience for example if a director is wanting feedback on a film they will use questionnaires to see what should have been done differently for next time they produce a film.Face To Face Interviews
Face to face interview also known as in-person interview, is probably the most popular and oldest form of survey data collection, it is the most frequently used quantitative research method, interviews can be conducted in respondent's home or workplace, in halls or even simply on the street. The advantages of face to face interviewing is that you can get the best out of someone from talking to them face to face people tend to get there opinions and idea's across more clearly and also they can use their free speech they don't need to agree with the interviewee, and the disadvantage is that it can be time consuming and hard to analyse all the different responses. For example film producers will interview their audiences to find out what they would like the film to include.How are these findings used?
When media producers use all these research techniques they find a lot of information, they then analyse the information and figure out what they to change to suit the target audience for the media product. They then use the above techniques to compare their findings so that they can produce the best product they can so the audience will be completely satisfied.
