Lesson 1: The Notion of the

Audience
When you think about it, no two people will read or
hear the same message from the media and
information texts that they receive. Your classmate
may share the same hobbies and lifestyle with you, but
you will still look at things differentlt. Why do you think
so?
It could be because your own lived experiences as a
person which makes your character as unigue as your
thumbprint. Included in these are your childhold,
upbringing education, expirience with friends and even
your own habits and hobbies that have come to define
you as a person.
 Our similarities are important to fully understand how
media and information creators construct the category of
target audiences. They target a specific segment of the
population with shared life characteristics to sell a product
or influences their opinion. We will also be tackling the
concept of target audiences in this chapter.
How can we define the word audiences? Let us look at
this attempt to a definition;
"...an audiences may be any group of people exposed to
media. Some audiences (such as thos for sports events or
concert) are physically present at the media event. Other
audiences (such as those for novels, television, radio) are
not.additionally, audiences members need not undergo
the experiences at the same time (for example,not
everyone reads the book or sees the movie at the same. (
Danesi 2009,30)
 Different media, Different Audiences
Consider the differences between audiences
of different media.we may cite the following
items as areas of differences:
•Level of activity and engagement with the
media and information text
•Level of the interaction with fellow audience
•Location and space occupied
•Amount of time devoted to watching or
viewing
•Accessibility and proximity
 Audience of noontime shows come together to
vicariously engage with a specific form of
entertainment. While in the midst of watching
they interact with each other-exchange
pleasantries, engage in games, and possibly,
jostle for viewing space. Television audiences in
the domestic setting are also able to angage but
perhaps in a limited way. Tgere are phone in
features embedded in the format of a television
show so audiences at home can join in the
contests. Telecommunications companies have
introduced text messaging where the viewer can
participate but will be charged a certain amount
in responding to a question or perhaps voting for
a particular contestant in a television
 Space and location bear on the behavior of audiences. In a
domestic setting, audiences feel relaxed and may even get
interrupted by house chores, a telephone call, or a visitir.
Together they share opinions and insight once they sit before
the television screen. Audience in cinema behave differently as
they remain seated and couched in the darkness of the
theather.
The notion of a public is conveniently attached to the idea of
audience. They are often imagined as a mass of people
congregating in a space (as in the case of live shows or sports
event), a smaller group of people in a cinema, or even the
smaller family unit in the house. This gathering of people to
form congregation is one of the visualizations thaht enter the
minds of media creators and procedures as they build a target
audience. They are also aware that audiences can be
disaggregated to the direction of very specific characteristics. A
print advertisement of a hair product prominently displayed
along a major avenue takes the individual passerby or
pedestrian as its target audience.
Thus, we see the problem of a single word audience can be
represented in many ways. Nightingale (quoted by McQuail
2000,233) proposes a typology of audiences:
a. Audience as " the people assembled" and playing
attention to a media performing before them;
b. Audience as "the people addressed,"referring to a group
of people who were inagined by the communicator in the
creation and dissemination of the text, such as the women
who the advertisers think should be patronizing their
product;
c. audience as "happening," which could be the experience
of reception alone or with others as an interactive event
like a live streaming in the internet of a global event, such
as the Miss Universe or the address of the President of the
United States; and
 d. audience as "hearing" or "audition" which refers to participatory
audience expirience, a high degree of engagement like in a noontime
show broadcasted live, and the audienc participation is embedded in
the show.
 MASS AUDIENCES
In chapter 1, we have learned about the
nature of mass communication,
specifically its ability to reach large
audiences. The word "audience" has still
its roots in the idea of a spectator, or the
captive set of listeners or viewers
assembled in a more or less public and
common space.
 But one dramatic change has happened
because of the advent of technology like the
printing press, the film projector, and the
broadcast cables. The media can be
experienced by people even if they are alone.
We can put it this way: we can be in various
parts of the globe, separated by seas and
continents, but will still be receiving exactly
the same thing. Think of a CNN live coverage
of a spectacular event, or a local news
channel but broadcasting through satellite to
reach out to OFWs in different parts of the
world.
 This notion has its historical context. Modernity
introduced the printing press, photograph, film, radio,
and television. All of these media allowed the broad
distribution of media and information texts to an
enormous number which otherwise could have been
restricted to a few people who had access.
If you go back to chapter 1, it is quite evident where
the idea of a mass audience came from the invention
of photography, film, radio, and television. These
phenomena allwoed works of entertainment and
information that might have been restricted for just a
few people to be experienced in a setting like a gallery
or a public theater and allowed that it be transmitted
to huge numbers of people in different parts of the
world.
 From Mass Audience
to Audience Segments
Bt the early decades of the twentieth century,
the news paper industry and the cinema have
both gained foothold in Europe and United
States. By 1920s, broadcasting emerged.
Suddenly a new "market" was created both for
the televesion and radio as appliances and
televesion and radio program as formats. It
was during this time thaht the word "market"
offered a more attractive concept. McQuail
(2010) notes that:
"As the media have become bigger business, the term
'market' has gained in currency. It can designate
regions served by media, social-demographic
categories, or the actual or potential consumers of
particular edia services or products. It may be defined
as an aggregate of actual or potential consumers of
media."
Thus, McQuail (2010,366) sees this is a praatic and
necessary one for media industries-to treat audiences
as sets of consumers aggregated according to
characteristics rather than treating them as as
undifferentiated public. Thus, continues McQuail, the
relationship between media creator and procedures
and the audience became "calculative" rather than a
normative or social relationship, as a cash transaction
between producer and consumer rather than a
communication relationship.
 For instance, take the case of the glossy magasize
industry in the Philippines. Most of these "glossies,"
as they are now reffered to, are franchised from
multinational corporations abroad. Summit
Publishing, considered by many as the leading
magazine publisher, conbines forrign licensed and
locally vonceived magazine in its product line-up.
Segmenting audiences tailor the content to a specific
segment of society, thus improving the quality of the
content that will most likely be relevant and
apptopriate to tge beeds and desires of the target
audience. When it speaks to them, they are more
likely to be reached and more likely to patronize the
product.
 A number of factors make audience
segmetation more possible in the age of
digital technology that made publishing and
production much faster and accessible.
Second, the advertising industry privileges
audience segments because it makes
messaging and content creation more
specific. Lastly, sophisticated mechanisms for
audience research and building databases of
audience segements have enabled more
targeted content creation that is solidly
backed up by scientific research.