Media Studies

The way people see the world is determined by the media. Everything is mediated to them, which means that their opinions are formed by what the media shows or tells them. The main ways this information is given are:

Film

TV

Publishing

Music

Games

Radio

Each of these media have a different way of getting the target audience’s attention. For example, radio, they could play a certain type of music to get people to listen to the station and then they sell the audience on to advertisers, and that’s how they make a profit.
Also in the news, some of the information given is not necessarily true. Like the troops invading Iraq because Saddam Hussein supposedly had weapons of mass distruction, he actually didn’t have any. The country was conviently sat on a huge mass of oil, so the politicians manipulated the population through the media to get them to think it was a good idea to invade Iraq. The politicians knew that they couldn’t do anything unless the populations was behind them , so the media played a part in that issue.

The media also have ways of breaking down the populations so they can target them easily. They have what are called ‘Social Grades’, which are as follows:

A    Upper Middle Class    doctor, solicitor, barrister, accountant, company director

B    Middle Class    teacher, nurse, police officer, probation officer, librarian, middle manager

C1    Lower Middle Class    junior manager, student, clerical/office workers, supervisors

C2   Skilled Working Class    foreman, agricultural worker, plumber, brick layer

D    Working Class    manual workers, shop worker, fisherman, apprentices

E    Underclass    casual labourers, state pensioners
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_grade

Demographics refers to selected population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research. (Note the distinction from demography, see below.) Commonly-used demographics include race, age, income, disabilities, mobility (in terms of travel time to work or number of vehicles available), educational attainment, home ownership, employment status, and even location. Distributions of values within a demographic variable, and across households, are both of interest, as well as trends over time. Demographics are frequently used in economic and marketing research.

Demographic trends describe the changes in demographics in a population over time. For example, the average age of a population may increase

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics

 Audiences

There are two main media audience types: mainstream and niche.

The mainstream audience is the vast majority of consumers who buy mainstream products. An example, being in music, the mainstream audience would buy such CDs by artists like 50 cent, System Of A Down and Madonna.
The niche audience is the minority, using the same example above, this audience would probably buy music by artists like Buckethead and other lesser known musicians.

Media producers monitor the audience by looking at what media products are most popular, or they create an audience to sell to advertisers. These media producers may get their information from companies like Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) or Radio Joint Audience Research (RAJAR).

BARB mainly get information about TV, such as ratings for companies like ITV and Channel 4. These companies would need this inforamation so they can charge for advertising, the higher the ratings the more money that charge, and that’s how the companies get their funding.
Participating families have a box on top of their TV which tracks the programmes they watch. Currently, BARB have approximately 5,100 homes (equating to approximately 11,500 individuals) participating in the survey. The box records exactly what programmes they watch, which is then reported back to the TV stations and the advertisers. BARB numbers are extremely important to commercial television stations. The trading model that is used by television companies and advertising agencies depends on the number of people watching the shows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BARB

RAJAR does the same as BARB but they do it for the radio. The company pays people to fill in forms about when they listen to the radio and what stations they listen to. The form is a lot of work so that’s why they pay the people to fill them in.

RAJAR has conducted extensive testing of electronic devices that capture listening, either by picking up encoded signals within station transmissions or by matching captured audio against a database of all transmissions. This would allow measurement to capture both ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious’ listening and would theoretically end listeners attributing their listening to the wrong station. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAJAR

Most people today download music and media producers also monitor that. Nielsen SoundScan help them see what songs are most popular at the time so then they can charge people a small amount to download as much music a they want. Many people would agree with that and that would generate a massive amount of music.

MTV, VH1, and many other North American cable music channels use Nielsen SoundScan data as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundscan

The way the media industries appeal to the consumers is that they give them products they want. They find out what people want according to the deomgraphics and produce it and see if it’s popular.

The music industry can’t really predict the market, so they use what’s called Portfolio Management. The producers make lost the same genre product and hope that some of them become popular. They do this because, if they only make one product, that one might not be popular with the consumers and the record company makes a huge loss, so they have to make a lot of CDs etc and they make a profit that way.

The games industry do it quite different, they also use demographics and psychographics, but they make few products, one from each genre (shoot ‘em up, fantasy, action etc) and see which become popular. For example, a recent game that has been released, Halo 3 by Microsoft. They’re not gonna make another game immediatley because they might waste their time making a game that wont be bought immediately because all the focus is on Halo 3.
The game itself is supposed to be a hit for a while with people still buying it for quite along time, which gives the manufacturers time to rest or whatever, taking into consideration that making a video game takes a lot of time and effort.

Cinema is a mix of the way music and games work. This industry covers all genres and make more products than games. They make many films in all genres and releases them and hopefully they will be popular with the consumers, but the film makers dont release another film straight after.

TV makes a variety of programs in different genres. The producers air them out and the see what type of program is going to be successful and the ones that aren’t popular they get dropped quite quickly. The ones that are successful carry on being aired, depending on the ratings for the show, they might get aired at a more regular time.

Radio also make a lot of programs in different genres.  There’s commercial radio and *Public Service Radio (PSB). Commercial radio is targetted to a very specific audience and these people are sold onto they advertisers, based on demographics and psychographics. Commercial radio is basically all about the advertising and the music they play is just to accumulate their chosen group of consumers.

PBS
BBC Radio is a PBS station, which means they dont get their funding from advertisers, they get it from the people who pay their TV licence for the BBC tv channels.
In the USA radioa developed as a system that could deliver the most concentrated, well-defined demographic audience to advertisers.
Radio stations differentiated themselves by adopting a specific genre and targeting people who like that genre, the first radio station that used this format was a country music station.
This way the listener wouldnt be worrying about being ‘entertained’ with an old jazz band and being enlightened with music from ’serious’ composers, like in the British national system in the 20s.