What is a target audience?

What is an audience?

An individual or collective group of people who read or consume any media text, examples of this are radio listeners, television viewers, newspaper and magazine readers.

How do we define target audiences?

To define your target audience you would need to think about 6 things: Age, gender, class, ethnic group, interests and uses & gratifications.

• When thinking about age, your need to figure out what age group will enjoy and appreciate it for example if your were to make a cartoon film, the stereotypical age group would be ages 3-12 but regardless other people can watch the film.
• Gender is an major part for audience research. Media/documentary producers need to target a gender before they decide what to do so they can define their target audience any further. It usually depends on the type of documentary the producer is trying to make. For example if a producer was trying to find a target audience for a documentary about feminism, it would be mainly targeted at women.
• Class which is also referred as Socio- economic status is a method used by industries to find the right economic class audience for their target audience. For example you traditionally have three classes which are upper class, middle class and working class. This method is useless to a documentary producer because they are usually just trying to target an audience and it shouldn't really matter what class it is.
• For ethnic groups, people occasionally like to target specific groups when doing films or television documentaries involving racially charged events for example the black lives matter movement that is circling mainly around America.
• When making a film, the main thing to think about is the interests of your audience for example, if you are thinking about making a horror film the audience looks for a good storyline, to be scared and to be left in suspense. Without these things it doesnt make it a horror film.
• When it comes to uses and gratifications people look for things that they can relate to for instance, personal identity, people look someone to represent themselves in a media, for example associating themselves with characters in a TV drama and connecting with their perspective. Some people also want a diversion, they consume media to get away from their own lives and stresses and generally to relax or cheer up.

Why is it useful for a film to have a target audience?

In the film industry, recognising and appealing to your target audience is incredibly important as they will be the types of people who will be watching your film. Recognising your target audience early on in your pre-production is vital as they will determine the content of your film. For example, a film opening that is aiming to appeal to a teenage market will be different to an opening appealing to older people. Your target audience need to be able to relate and engage with your film opening.

Which audiences to you think different genres appeal to?

• For genres like Comedy and Fantasy, I think all ages can watch them and they appeal to any gender.
• Genres like Action, Drama and Fantasy are complicated because depending on what is in the film is when you can give a ages group but all genders can watch
• Horror and Thriller usually fall into the same place when it comes to age groups, they are mainly 18+, but as for gender it is for everyone.