Today Brian Morris talked to us about audience.
Audiences are often categorised in different ways. Such as ‘demographics’ (as in age brackets, e.g. 18-25) which concern businesses such as advertisers, commercial broadcasters, production houses, individual houses and program makers, government policy makers, social scientists/psychologists and cultural theorists to name a few. Over the years there have been changing conceptions around audience as broadcasting has changed to narrowcasting and citizens have become consumers. This has caused changes in TV institutions, the technology behind production, distribution and consumption, and audience practices (Morris, 2015).
When TV was first established in Australia, many were concerned about its effect on the individual and it was focused towards the ‘suburban housewife’, the key audience for television when it all began. Now, audiences and the content they like to watch have fractured and splintered into so many different niche areas, with different aesthetic sensibilities, and different needs to be advertised and catered towards.
The broadcast audience is public, that is to say that it is one person (a presenter) to many. Often this presenter, such as Oprah Winfrey or Ellen Degeneres, can create a sort of social glue and a community around their audience creating a virtual public sphere.
In the public sphere, who do media creators address? Many debates have arisen around talk show hosts and their heavily feminised views, as well as their concerns with previously taboo subjects.
Many media-oriented institutions use the idea of mass culture and mass audiences, but as R. Williams put it in ‘Culture and Society’ (1963), “there are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.”
– Morris, Brian. Lectorial Week 9. May 5th 2015.