Audeince Theory

The term ‘Target Audience’ for media producers means ‘the audience is an audience that is most relevant and connected to the media product that the company is trying to sell’. Every media text is produced with the intended reader in the mind. When analysing a media text it’s much easier once you have identified the target audience, because then you can start to look for particular features of the text which appeal to that specific target audience.

 It is important therefore that the producer considers the content of the text, making sure that the text is appropriate for their selected target audience. For instance the watershed, this law only allows nudity and swearing to be shown on television after 9 pm as this is when minors have gone to bed. The producer also have to consider then style of presentation, whether the text is attractive to the target audience using the idea of the colour scheme, choosing dominant colour they feel will engage the target audience , such as using bright colour for a produce that is trying to sell to children.

Another way to classify our target audience is through gender.  Both sexes - men and women have completely different interests therefore it is an obvious factor in consider for their target audience. As Women are assumed to like shopping, whereas technology such as cars and phones is assumed to interest men.

Alongside gender we also have to consider how someone’s age will effect what they buy. As depending on your age you have different interest as your maturity levels, so different things will appeal to different age groups. For instance children are interested in cartoons and animated programme with bright colour, good use of pictures and little text. Whereas pensioners are interested in documentaries and factual information about society.

After considering also these aspects with also have to take in account the audience’s social class, this is different grouping depending on how much you earn a year. This helps us who we are designing our project on and the interest of this specific group.  The social classes are categorised as:

Ø A -  higher managerial and professional

Ø B - middle management

Ø C1 - office workers

Ø C2 - skilled manual workers

Ø D - unskilled workers

Ø E - unemployed, unwaged

 The government develop a census every ten years based on the occupational groupings.