Thursday, September 12, 2019

Audience Research: Audience Profile

The brief requires for the product to have a 16-25-year-old fun-loving mass-market audience. Given the broadcast station being Radio 4, it is an unconventional audience as the target audience of Radio 4 is 35-54-year-olds in the ABC1 demographic. This target audience is reflected in the programming as evidenced by 75% of all Radio 4 listeners belongs to the ABC1 group. 16-25-year-olds are difficult to assign to a class-based demographic group such as the A - E scale as many will still be in education and will not have set into a social class of their own, and due to the need for my product to be "mass-market", it needs to appeal to a young adult regardless of their economic background. Considering this, young adults are moving away from traditional radio and moving into internet-based podcasting, and therefore my audience will be one familiar with the codes, conventions and culture of online podcasting which will make a traditional radio sitcom, sticking with the Radio 4 brand, about online podcasting culture appealing to this mass-market young adult demographic.

In terms of psychographics, it might be easy to assume that due to the "mass-market" nature of the audience, the largest proportion will be mainstreamers. However, it is important to consider that the internet has essentially made "the mainstream" non-existent among young people. Everyone now belongs to fragmented subcultures and what was once the mainstream, considered the most popular, is now simply another subculture. I believe it is therefore more important to capitalise on other psychographic groups such as the Aspirer or the Explorer, which most young people may fall into due to being in a stage of their life where they begin to set their sights on goals and explore their opportunities. My product's characters will have to reflect these values in order to successfully court these psychographic groups.

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