The Audience and The Feedback Pertemuan Matakuliah: O0394 – Teknik Reportase dan News Caster Tahun: 2010

Learning Objectives Media communication cannot be separated from its audience and feedback. This section will discuss audience and feedback with focus on a couple of factors: (1) framing to which viewers the programs are assigned, and (2) measuring the rating of the audience. 3

Framing the Audience How the word ‘Audience’ should be defined? The word ‘audience’ is familiar as the collective term for the ‘receivers’ in the simple sequential model of mass communication process (source, channel, message, receiver, effect) Allor (1988): “The audience exists nowhere; it inhabits no real space, only positions within analytic discourses.” 4

Framing the Audience Audience can be defined in different ways: by place (as in the case of local media), by people (as when a medium is characterized by an appeal to a certain age group, gender, political belief or income category), by particular type of medium or channel involved (technology and organization combined), by the content of its messages (genres, subject matters, styles), by time (as when one speaks of the ‘daytime’ or ‘primetime’ audience, or audience that is fleeting and short term compared with one that endures). 5

Framing the Audience Audience are both a product of social context (which leads to shared cultural interests, understandings and information needs) and a response to a particular pattern of media provision; 6

Audience-Related Issues (1/4) Certain issues towards audience, media, and their behavior Media use as addiction Excessive media use has often been viewed as harmful and unhealthy, leading to addiction, dissociation from reality, reduced social contacts and diversion from education; with television as the most usual suspect followed by video games and computers; 7

Audience-Related Issues (2/4) Audience behavior as active or passive Audience as mass is passive since it is incapable of collective action; individual acts of media choice, attention and response can be active in terms of degree of motivation, attention, involvement, pleasure, critical response, connection with the rest of life. There is a tendency, whether explicitly or not, to view active media use as ‘better’ than passive; 8

Audience-Related Issues (3/4) Alternative media perceptions of the audience The audience can be approached in normative and relational terms with a genuine communicative purpose: its composition, its engagement with communicators and content, the quality of attention and response, its loyalty, its commitment and continuity; 9

Audience-Related Issues (4/4) The implications of new media technology The pros and contras on the implication of new media technology towards audience: - more freedom and diversity of communication and reception; - the audience will be more fragmented and will lose their national, local or cultural identity; - there will be an increasing gap between the media rich and the media poor. 10

Why so Important… Why is it important to know your audience -Accounting for sales -Measuring actual and potential reach for purposes of advertising -Manipulating and channeling audience choice behavior -Looking for audience market opportunities -Product-testing and improving communication effectiveness -Meeting responsibilities to serve an audience -Evaluating media performance in a number of ways 11

Rating the Audience (1/4) The rating process Measuring TV viewing A research company will conduct a set of research activities on television viewers. The random samples are collected from household. Four times a year the information is collected and that measurement period is called “sweeps”. The measurement results will be used by local stations to determine advertising rates. 12

Rating the Audience (2/4) Processing the data The data collected by the research company then processed overnight and made available for customer access the next day. The ratings books Each rating books contain demographic information of the audience, and technical problems the stations may have during the rating period. 13

Rating the Audience (3/4) There are 3 (three) terms and concepts used in television rating: 1.Household using television (HUT) The number or the percentage of households that have a television set during a specific time of period. 2. Rating The percentage or proportions of all households with a television set watching a particular program at a particular time. A rating of 10 means that 10 percent of all the homes in the market were watching a specific program. Ratings consider all households in the market not just those with tv set in use. 14

Rating the Audience (4/4) 3.Share of the audience (share) The total number of household watching a particular program at a specific time divided by the total number of households using television. The share is based only on those households that actually have their TV sets turned on. Some programs can have the shame share but have different ratings. 15

Calculating the Rating (1/2) The formula for calculating rating and share Ratings: Number of households watching a program Total number of households in market Share: Number of households watching a program Total number of HUT 16

Calculating the Rating (2/2) For example: There are 1,000 households in the market. At 18 pm 100 of those 1,000 households have their TV sets on. Of the 100 households, 20 are watching “Evening News”. Rating: 20/1000 = 2% Share: 20/100 = 20% 17

The Significance of Rating Ratings can be used to determine what types of people are watching. The advertisers are more interested in audience type than audience size; Ratings can be used to persuade the advertisers to put their money in their station; Ratings can be used to see how much viewing occurs in neighboring communities-if the ratings show substantial viewing, the station might want to increase coverage of the areas to encourage continued viewing and better ratings. 18

Other Audience Research Music Research: Call-outs, Auditorium Testing Market Research: Production Research, Audience Segmentation Research 19

Closing At the end of this discussion, it is expected that the students will understand how the feedback from audience can actually be measured by using certain method. However, it must also be known that although such measurement can be very helpful in finding out the audience’s response toward a television program the measurement is not that perfect at all. 20