Unit 6 Task 1 Critical Approaches Ben Taylor

Media producers can define audiences for their productions by certain methods for instance one being by

Quantitative audience research. An example of this is using  BARB which stands for ‘Broadcasters Audience Research Board which is a website that provides weekly UK  audience figures for shows on the television find  on the World Wide Web. You can also use other websites for quantitative audience research for instance ‘RAJAR’ which stands for Radio Joint Audience Research which measures radio audiences in the UK.

 

 

 For this assignment I have chosen the television show of my choice ‘The X Factor’ a British television music competition to find new singing talent. The X Factor is broadcast on the ITV network in the United Kingdom and the show began in September 2004 and has since aired annually from August/September until December. It is now on series 11 to this date with key well known judges; Simon Cowell, Cheryl Cole, Mel B and Louie Walsh.

 

With the X Factor on BARB it gives a weekly 7 day data of the ratings it got of viewers and can also go back to see previous weeks to compare the amount who watch the show. As the X Factor is now being played on ITV on a Saturday and Sunday most nights BARB produce both data’s and from this you can see the difference in views. For instance the X Factor on Saturday at 20; 05 got 8,128 views. On the Sunday it got 7,719.  The difference from this was Sunday had four hundred and nine less viewers. The date being with this is the 18^th and 19^th of September. With the X Factor their main competition is the broadcast of BBC One and features Doctor Who as one competitor if shown on the same time and its main rivals being Strictly Come Dancing. Each week and year there both trying to beat one another in the rating every week because it is played at the same time maybe a few minutes in it.  In recent weeks Strictly Come Dancing has beaten the X Factor apart from the first week dated 7^th of October. Strictly was in the lead but because of consolidated figures which take account of viewings via set-top box recording in the following seven days this made the result go to The X Factor. The rating for X Factor earned 9.23 million viewers while Strictly had 9.16 million viewers. Results before this result saw Strictly Come Dancing win because they pulled in an average of 8.43 million viewers, 1.5 million more than X Factor’s 6.98 million average. 

 

Another way media producers can define their audience is by Qualitative audience research, for instance doing focus groups, questionnaires, face-to-face interviews. Media producers or someone working for them ask members of the public questions by this it helps them make a target audience to see what they like and don’t. Getting the correct target audience creates better results through ratings and profit made. When making a target audience media producers have to think of many factors for instance age, gender, religion, race, sexuality, education, occupation, annual income, and disposable income and media interests. The X Factor at the very start  before the show started would of had a questionnaire to the public to see what they thought of the idea of the X Factor and to get to know the audience age and gender who would watch this Factor producers would of had focus groups who would have watched the show when it came out to talk about what they like the most on the show and not so much and improvements to adjust and make better. Then after this procedure Simon Cowell will make the ultimate edition but most of his productions work and don’t need a lot of research.

 

Another way media producers define there target audience is by Audience profiling for example socio-economic status which makes sure they have the right economic class audience. With Audiences in media they get put into different categories like most things  for instance  the there are three classes upper class, middle class and working class in this order. Upper class people are being the wealthy people, the middle class being in the middle of it all but fairly comfortable. And the working class people with low paying jobs. Knowing the class of the audience depends on what they watch.  For instance people who work during the day will not watch certain programmes because there out and busy than the working class with low paid jobs might not watch a particular programme because it costs a lot of money for instance getting Sky Sports channels it would cost extra to free view.

 

Other audience profiling genres is put into other categories for instance age, gender; sexual orientation which all is simple context some productions might not be for both genders perhaps one. For instance boys won’t want to watch horses and ponies. Some productions target a certain age range for instance children’s television shows is for kids under the age of 13 you wouldn’t have the target audience being teenagers. Having the correct age will be appealing and interesting to the audience creating success hopefully.

 

Another way for profiling audience is Demographics chart which is used to narrow down the search for the best target audience. The purpose of the chart is to define the adult population largely by the work that they do. By this it breaks them down into six groups then letter coded to describe the status and income of the members of each group.

 

 For instance the six groups being below;

A= lawyers

B= middle management, teachers, creative and media people,

C1= office supervisors, nurses, skilled people

C2= semi skilled for instance builders, plumbers

C3= students and pensioners

D= unemployed/ prisoners

 

Psychographics is another way media producers define audiences. Psychographics is similar to demographics but that they deal more with the audience’s behaviour and personality rather than the work they do.

 For instance it deals with how they choose to live for example hobbies, interests everyone in the World have their own. Media producers often use this to help profile their audience because just like demographic charts they are much more detailed and offer a variety of audiences to choose from. Geodemographics is important for media produces when defining an audience because you need to know where your audience lives, knowing what there cultural sense of humour is and how they access media for instance Third world countries would struggle to access certain television shows than people in the UK most of the UK would of watched UK television programmes for this case the X Factor is a great example.

 

With the X Factor ITV purposely order to have a mix of ages for the judges and to be well known to get higher viewing figures and benefit with higher advertising revenue. With the judges this is a very key part to age and gender. For example an older audience may tune in for Louis Walsh. Whereas a younger audience will be attracted to Cheryl Ann Fernandez from her music career and a young male audience attracted to her looks for example teenage boys and single men.

 

When audience profiling is in television shows different types of media can help for instance Social networks which play a huge part in marketing of The X-Factor. By this it allows fans to interact with the show via Twitter and Face book to fell more engaged. This is in important aspect in drawing a younger demographic of people to the show as they are the majority who use these sites to express their opinions.

 

In the X Factor one of the stages is when four group categories of contestants are separated with girls, boys, and groups and over a certain number by this it enables the audience to relate to the age category. The X-Factor also hosts a number of worldwide music stars, this attracts an audience who already follow the stars who may not normally watch the show, and also gives the show more publicity as high-profile stars will certainly get the audience talking about the show. Depending on who the act is it will bring different audiences for instance having Rod Stewart would bring in the older generation.

Or One Direction for example performing on the show would bring teenage girls.  Also because X Factor is Saturday night television people watch it as a family to have fun, not cost money and relax especially for families who don’t have loads of money that is a night in for them and something they can all do together. Overall media producers can define audiences for their productions as said above by Quantitative audience research, e.g. BARB and RAJAR. Also by Qualitative audience research such as focus groups, questionnaires, face-to-face interviews and then Audience profiling for example socio-economic status, psychographics, geo-demographics, age and gender.

 

 

 

Person 1   Age	Gender	What job do you have? If so what is it?	How often do you watch television shows a day?	What is your favourite television programme?	Why do you like it?
13-19	Female	Unemployed	5-7 hours	Family guy, New Girl	Funny interesting
13-19	Male	Blacksmith assistant	7+ hours	Two and a half men	Charlie Sheen
13—19	Male	Cleaner	7+ hours	8 out of 10 cats	Funny entertained
13-19	Male	Unemployed	7+ hours	Family guy	It’s funny
13-19	Female	Student	2-3 hours	South park	It’s funny, edgy, random
13- 19	Male	Dog walker	7+ hours	Archer	Funny
13-19	Male	None	2-3 hours	Family guy	It’s funny and addictive
13-19	Female	None	2-3 hours	IT crowd	It’s funny
13-19	Male	N/A	1-2 hours	Archer	Because it’s hysterical
Person 10   13-19	Male	None	1-2 hours	Archer	It’s comedy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is your least favourite programme?	Why is it your least favourite?	What hobbies do you have?	What interests do you have?
Person 1   Don’t have one		Photography, cars, media	Football, Xbox, TV
Emmer dale	Bad storyline	Swords, TV, jousting	TV
Made in Chelsea	Fake and not my liking of a show	Gaming and films	Watching videos and TV + film
To many to pick from		Video games	Food
Dr who	It’s now over the top, too silly and unbelievable	Drawing, filming, writing, playing guitar	Filming stop motions, drawing graphics art
Programs like skins/ reality shows	Boring	Anime videos, yu gi oh tog	Internet videos and yu gi oh
Big brother	It’s pointless  and annoying	Playing the guitar and watching videos	Learning
Towie	It’s terrible, bad acting	Editing, reading, drawing	Photography, computers
Super Sweet 16	Because the kids are all brats	Film, TV, music, food, internet, books	Unhealthy amount of Radiohead
Person 10   All reality shows	Bad production and not interesting	Gaming	Gaming comics