Target Audience Profile

I have created a target audience profile to narrow down what type of audience I
want to target, I also wanted to create a target audience to make it easier for myself
to see what type of people are more likely to be watching the television at the same
time so that I can get the most viewers when the trailer is on. The target audience
will be based on class, race, interests, attitudes, beliefs, gender age and race.
Demographic figures and groupings will help to determine what storyline are the
most popular, which will therefore conclude the type of viewers and what they find
the most interesting.

The class for my target audience will be of a middle classed audience; this is mainly
because the storylines combined with the characters within the soap will mostly
consist of a middle class status. With this in mind existing soap series at the
moment are based around middle-class families around a village or town. The
storylines that are involved within the soaps are stories that a passive audience
would be able to understand briefly, without having to watch each episode out of
the full series. Due to the demographics of the target audience being mostly
category E.

By looking into demographic groupings from secondary research I am able to figure

out what storylines within soaps are the most popular, with this in mind I will be
looking into the Phil Mitchell episode, as well as the Lucy Beale house party episode,
by looking into the audience figures I am able to see what makes the episodes the
most popular and expand my ideas a lot more so that they are going to be more
popular. By looking into the audience viewings I will also be able to see what
channel will best fit my soap considering the story lines. As Eastenders is shown on
BBC1 it will be more suitable to show mine on Channel 1 or Channel 2.
Conventionally this would be the most likely channel to show my soap as from the
demographics it is the most popular. After looking into secondary research the
figures show that the most popular soap is Eastenders, this then backs up the idea
to analyze more of Eastenders storylines to gather more ideas.

I have been researching into the different demographic group so that I can narrow
down exactly who i want to be targeted to watch my soap, here is a list of the
different demographic groups:

The demographic categories will be very important to choosing the audience for our
soap. Here is a list of the categories.

A- Higher managerial, administrative, professional e.g. Chief executive, senior civil

servant, surgeon
B - Intermediate managerial, administrative, professional e.g. bank manager,
teacher

C1- Supervisory, clerical, junior managerial e.g. shop floor

supervisor, bank clerk, sales person

C2 - Skilled manual workers e.g. electrician, carpenter

D- Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers e.g. assembly line worker, refuse
collector, messenger

E - Casual labourers, pensioners, unemployed e.g. pensioners without private

pensions and anyone living on basic benefits

The demographic group that I have decided to target the most will be cartergory E,
this is because after carrying out a questionnaire most of the occupations came
under the catergory E and if need be catergory D. Furthermore the tv showing will
need to be on at the time when catergory E are most likely to be watching it, for
example pensioners may want to sit down and relax with their dinner, or students
who have been studying and want to have their dinner to unwind. The characters
within the soap will be used so that the viewers will be able to relate to the
characters such as Keith the pub drunk

We are going to have a storyline in our soap that takes ideas from the Lucy Beale
house party episode from Eastenders. We are doing this because after researching
into audience ratings, Eastenders continues to have some of the highest figures in
all soap opera listings. We are incorporating the party scene within our soap is
because that we know it has been popular in the past, the Lucy Beale Eastenders
episode received 11.62 million viewers on the 5th of January. This shows us that this
teenage storyline is very popular coming second in BBC1’s ratings that week.
As you can see like our character (the conventional teenage girl trying to become
popular), Lucy tries to fit in with the popular crowd and hosts a party that all goes
wrong. We will use this to relate to teenagers who want to try and fit in.

Another episode that has a high percentage of viewers was the Eastenders 6th of
August episode concentrating on Phil Mitchell and his alcohol and drug problems. As
this reached a figure of around 9.8 million viewers we also wanted to incorporate
this into our soap opera, although this was not as many viewers as the Lucy Beale
episode it is still considerably large, and something we think people can relate to,
with our characters who is the local pub drunk.

Here is a shot of Phil after drinking too much alcohol which we can use for our
typical conventions of Keith. This can be aimed at people in a low aspirer
demographic group as they are likely to be able to relate to Phil Mitchell’s
behaviour.

As we are going to be aiming our soap at a more active audience we will make use
of Halls reception theory, encoding and decoding model. This means we will be
putting codes into our episodes that he audience will have to then decode and
resolve to follow the story. This helps us to keep the audiences attention and
maintain their interest in the soap. By using codes in our soap episodes it is possible
to have an active audience who are more engaged in the soap and it becomes more
interactive as you could not just sit back and watch. We would not like the
hypodermic needle theory to be applied to our soap as we do not want our audience
to be passive and not get involved. This theory will gain less interest in our soap
because it will be hard for a passive audience to follow all the intertwining storyline
and plots.

The main effect that I want to have on my viewers that watch the soap is the
realism within it, and how the viewer can relate to their own characters. With this in
mind one of the main theories that I will be putting into use is the personal identity
gratification theory, this is because I want to show the realism through the
characters so viewers can relate to it. The main people within my soap are going to
be middles aged so such as Helen and Dan who are getting married; this is so that
viewers can relate to the characters and to the scenarios. Having older characters
will also help viewers to relate to the soap, making use of this theory also. The soap
will make use of creating characters who can be related to by viewers such as the
personal identity gratifications theory, by creating characters and having a wide
range of different characters to appeal to a larger audience. The cast will be around
the ages of teenagers to pensioners, so this will appeal to many different ages
within the population. For example Helen and Dan and Keith the pub drunk can be
related to from middle ages viewers to pensioners. The gratifications theory can be
related to by any different ages and audiences, so therefore this does make use of it
as I will be targeting mainly category E aimed and the elderly audience. My soap
will be aimed at an active audience rather than a passive one, aiming it at more of
an active audience will mean making use of the encoding and decoding theory of
Halls reception, so that the audience will have to follow the story line and think
about the situation an link the characters to the story, this will entice more viewers
and they will feel more involved and engaged within the soap. The hypodermic
theory will not be applied to the soap as the audience will no be passive and not be
involved, this is because it is more likely for the audience to become less enticed
within the storyline, which ultimately means that the audience will not tune into the
television pro gramme the next time round.

Many different soaps are schedules on the television at certain times, this is so that
the certain target audience can be targeted for example Firstly, Easterners is found
at different times during the week and
on every Wednesday it is not scheduled at all. On a Friday it is shown at 8.00 pm to
target the audience who want to have an easy night home from work eating dinner
later, another reason may be that weekend shows are schedules for this time. The
demographic group that this soap opera is aimed at is ranging between category C,
D and E. Having the soap showing over this period of time is ideal
because day time TV is less popular when soap operas are. However, the main
audience for soaps are found at the later times like Eastenders, Coronation Street
and Hollyoaks.

Hollyoaks is shown on the television earlier than many other soaps, it is on at

6.30pm although the next episode can be seen on channel E4 straight after that day
at 7.00pm. Hollyoaks also has another late night episode named 'The city' for older
groups from 18-25. this entices more viewers who prefer late night television. The
demographic groups that are targeted for this show is category D and E. at the end
of the episodes a helpline is offered to viewers, whether it be from drug use to
anorexia (Hannah trauma). Including these helplines can help viewers to deal with
their own real life problems and can also help to relate to characters. In conclusion
to this the time that the soap will be played is 7.00 pm, after carrying out the
research this will be the perfect time to get the most viewers.