Media Studies

The way we see the world is influenced by the media. Companies censor a lot of things so that we hear what they think we want to. The main media channels in which they get theis messages across are:

Film

TV

Publishing

Music

Games

and Radio.

Each channel has different ways to connect to different target audiences. For example, the radio can play music aimed at teenagers who like rock music, but if the station is commercial then it will start to add in advertisments for this audience. TV plays shows aimed at different audiences through out the day, such as day time and prime time to attract an audience. News channels around the world are a good example of how the media affects what we think. In one country, it may say that Iraq is home to terrorists who caused the 9/11 tragedy, whereas in Iraq it may say that America was just looking for someone to blame or to cover up for a conspiracy.

The media uses a Social Grade to appeal to its audience. this means it looks at which people are say, for example, reading a magazine to know what articles and adverts to include. This is how the social grade looks:

A – Upper Middle Class (doctor, solicitor, barrister, company director)

B – Middle Class (teacher, nurse, police officer, librarian)

C1 – Lower Middle Class (junior manager, student, office workers)

C2 – Skilled Working Class (foreman, brick layer, agricultural worker)

D – Working Class (manual worker, shop worker, fisherman)

E – Underclass (casual labourers, state pensioners)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_grade

They are generally seperated into ABC1 and C2DE to show equal respect to the upper middle class and working class.

As well as the social grade, the media looks at the demographics of the audience. Some of the most commonly used include race, age, income, disabilities, mobility, education, home ownership, employment and location. Demographic Trends describes any changes in a population such as an average age increase. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics

When marketing, advertising researching opinions and more, the media looks at various Psychographics of its audience. These include personallity, values, interests and lifestyles. When an assessment of the psychographics of a group is complete, it is known as a Psychographic Profile. This profile can be used to know what adverts to show to that audience.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychographics

The audiences’ lifestyle is also looked at when the media is looking at the media products they use. This can include looking at how the audience dress, what they eat, what things they buy, what they do for entertainment and their social relations. Again, this gives the media and idea of which adverts to show where and how much they charge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle

 Audiences

There are two divisions of audiences that the media appeal to: Mainstream and Niche. A main stream audience is the vast majority of an audience in general. A niche audience is a very selective, or minority, audience. For example, 50 Cent appeals to a mainstream audience whereas Reel Big Fish appeal to a niche audience. Media producers monitor their audiencs through specific companies for two main reasons. Firstly, they want to know how successful, for example a program is. This is so they know whether to continue to broadcast it or not. The second reason is so that they can decide how much to charge advertisers for showing an advert in that particular time slot when the program is been shown, as advertising rates vary according to the popularity of the media product. They use 2 main companies and one system. They are:B.A.R.B (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board) – this company monitors television ratings for who is watching what program on which channel. If they find that a show is not doing so well, the channel will replace it with something more successful. http://www.barb.co.uk/

RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research Limited) – this company monitors radio audiences. They monitor who is listening to what music and what is the most popular at the time. This gives a feedback to record companies who can release new bands or albums depending on what an audience is listening to. http://www.rajar.co.uk/

Nielsen Soundscan - an information system that tracks music sales. It is used my companies such as MTV to see what music and bands they should be playing to attract what would usually be a mainstream audience. In Britain record companies use the chart figures and their own sales data to work this out.

Appealing to an Audience

Each different industry has to find a certain way to appeal to its audience. For example, the music industry must appeal in a different way to the film industry in order to satisfy many different consumers.

MUSIC – the music industry can’t predict what will be popular. Record companies tend to release many different types of music at a time and see which is the most popular. which ever one becomes the most successful usually covers the cost of the others and they are dropped. They do this each time they want to appeal to a new audience or just want to make more money. Basically, only the most popular continue their career.

GAMES – the game industry have different genres to appeal to different audiences such as platform (Crash Bandicoot), first person shoot-em-up (Halo), simulators (Nintendogs), beat-em-up (Dead of Alive), adventure (Super Mario) and fantasy (Final Fantasy). Each genre appeals to different demographics and so the game industry has to be quite selective on what it includes in the game. Because of this, not many games can be released for each category each year like the music industry would. It also relies on sequels to be as popular (like Halo, Halo 2 and Halo 3) but sometimes this doesn’t work (Ratchet and Clank 1-3).

CINEMA – the cinema industry can’t always tell what will be popular to an audience. There are a few common features with cinema, music and game. the Cinema industry has to be selective as to what it makes as films are expensive to create. Not a lot of films from the same genre can be released during the year but there is usually at least one from each. more films are released than games each year but they cannot always be sure as to which audience it appeals to.

 TV – TV brings out a lot of programmes each year for different audiences. These can be anything from Drama or Comedy to Action and Reality. As there is a wide ranges of audiences for television, a lot of the programmes become popular and so stay on the air. The less popular are given a test run of around 10 episodes but are cancled if not many people watch.

RADIO – the radio industry creates many different stations and programmes to appeal to a wide variety of audiences. However there are only 2 types of radio station: Public Service Broadcast (PSB) and Commercial. Programmes like Galaxy and Kiss appeal to an audience that likes dance music and have mostly the same demographics whereas XFM has more listeners as it is one of the only shows that plays indie and rock music. It appeals to different demographics. Commercial radio stations target specific audiences because they play adverts according to their audiences’ preferences. XFM would advertise gig tickets and Galaxy would advertise alcohol. This is because the two different audiences like different things. PBS stations like the BBC don’t play adverts but their programmes usually appeal to more varied audiences during different time sof the day.

PRESS – the press industry has a few national papers that appeal to the same audience scattered about the country. Different papers and magazines appeal to different demographics such as The Times, the Daily Mail and The Indipendent. Magazines appeal to different audiences just like papers do. Celebs would appeal more to teenage girls or young women because it is full of gossip. FHM appeals more to men as it features articles about cars and sports. Even comic books appeal to different demographics. Local papers appeal to different Geodemographics. This means that the papers advertise different things or include different articles for different areas because other places may be richer or more interesting than others. Wythenshawe World would feature different things than a local paper in Oldham. Manchester Evening News includes features that appeal to different areas all over Manchester because it is a regional paper and features news from manchester only.

Public Service Broadcasting and Commercial Broadcasting

BBC is a typical PBS station. It is paid for by the public and so has no need for adverts to fund it. It appeals to a wide variety of audience during the day and only advertises things such as new programmes on the BBC channels. Other stations such as Galaxy are commercial and include adverts according to their audience. Galaxy appeals to an audience of young adults from the age of 20+ and so the adverts played are usually for alcohol, mortgages, loans and universities. Commercial stations such as XFM play adverts for MP3 players, gig tickets, CDs etc. they audience is usually teenagers to people around the age of 25.

~ by Fizwidget on December 20, 2007.