TV Audiences and BARB data

Audiences

Passive audience: 

Consuming media without actively engaging in the content (binging a series)

Active audiences:

engages and responding to a media text. (laughing along to a comedy show)

niche programmes:

• Call me by your name
• Atypical
• Love, Simon

Mainstream vs Niche

Niche: A niche media product is something that has a specific target audience and creates a product to appeal to a segment of people. Audience of a specialist interest appealing to a small and selective group e.g. age, ethnicity.

Mainstream: A mainstream media product is something that is targeted to a vast majority of audience. (titanic)

Psychographics: values, interests, lifestyle choices e.g. vegans (documentary about the environment)

Chris Anderson: The Long tail theory

• Devised by Chris anderson of Wired Magazine

The Long tail Theory:

This essentially is a business strategy where companies get profit for selling low volumes of niche products rather than large volumes of popular items to not as many customers.

Around 2010, digital sales of music started increasing = revenue of physical CD sales were dropping 

• The Long Tail Theory study showed that of the millions of tracks available to buy digitally, 80% of them sold no copies.

Traditional mass products are being replaced by niche digital products. A greater variety of niche media products generates more profit and income for companies.

Marketing used to be a 'one size fits all' - blockbusters (action for all men, romance for women). There are now many niche products- audiences are no longer satisfies by products that appeal to everyone.- Long tail theory exposes that so many products are available to a large audience.

Shops have limited shelf space but online retailers (Amazon, iTunes, Netflix) can stock virtually anything. Physical shops are more limited and lieky to stock hits (Blockbusters, top 10) whereas online stores stock everything. Therefore the millions of niche sales created outnumber the sales of hits.

What makes the long tale more valuable?

When consumers have infinite choice, true share of demand is revealed and it turns out to be less about the 'popular' products and more about the niche products to appeal to the consumer's interests better.

Products at the head of the tail were the most accessible to audiences, but as technology has enhanced, more niche products became more accessible to audiences.

Products at the head of the tail shift in demand from audiences and are replaced by a 'long tail' of niche products over time.

27/09/32

BARB

BARB = Broadcasters Audiences Research Board. They collate viewing data for all major UK broadcasters such as BBC, ITV, and Channel 4, Sky

• BARB data can then be used by television companies to assess how well a television series is performing- compared with previous series, for example, or with riva shows on other channels.

 

BARB Doctor Who Average Ratings: different actors and their popularity

Christopher Eccleston-

• 2005-7.9m

David Tennant-

• 2006- 7.7m
• 2007-7.5m
• 2008-8.0m

Matt Smith

• 2010-7.7m
• 2011-7.5m
• 2012/2013-7.4m
• 2017- 5.5m

 

Psychographics: Profiling of audiences based on personal beliefs, values, interests, and lifestyle.

 

National 

Readership

Survey

• The NRS social grades are a system of demographic classification used in the UK. They were originally developed by the National Readership Survey in order to classify readers, but are now used by many other organizations for wider applications and have become a standard for market research.

 

Time shifting- Disney +1

Convergence: Media convergence is when different digital technology has allowed content to be distributed across different platforms because the media has converged.