July 03, 2006
The Audience Product
In the mass communication process the audience product is formed by continuous interaction of consumers with media organizations and audience measurement firms. Both the institutions are important to the exercise of creating the audience product as, without media firms, no audience exist to be measured and without measurement firms no tangible data exists to be sold to the advertisers.
The advertisers
that are trying to reach out to their
target audience actually purchase
them before they are actually
produced by the media.
Fred Silverman, the legendary programmer for CBS, ABC, and NBC in the 1970's has been quoted as saying, “Fifty percent of success (read good ratings) is the program and fifty percent is how it is promoted.” In the late 1990's the top four networks in USA were collectively foregoing as much as $4 billion worth of advertising revenues to carry on air promotions.
In the current demassified, multichannel media environment, audiences are more selective in their media choices and simple technology like remote enables them to exercise this choice. This makes the task of Programmers and Media Planners alike a shade different and difficult as they try and keep pace with the changing tastes of Indian Television Viewing Populace.
DTH services coupled
with advanced electronic programme
guides (EPG), Video on demand ( VOD
) and Near VOD, Personal Video recorders
(PVR's) coupled with Multi Dwelling
Unit Solutions, will accelerate the
pace of adoption of DTH into Urban
Indian Homes (refer to related links
for a glimpse into future STB products
on the anvil).
 These
technologies have the potential of
audience polarization; this is already
common is movies, music, films and
to an extent radio. Same selectivity
might emerge in television audiences
as we move ahead on the media/ communications
technology trail.
This brings Media Branding to the fore and reinforces its importance both for Broadcasters as well as media planners/buyers (Secondary media consumers) that ultimately consume the audience product.
Branded Audiences
A media
brand can also be called a shop for
branded audiences, “ABC F 24+, a little
more upscale and a little more educated”.
This is what we initially called the
audience product. The one that makes
the marketing world go around. Its
importance is never lost to wither
the advertising fraternity or broadcasting
brethren. These branded audience coming
from a trusted source have become
increasingly important due to clutter
in the media marketplace in the last
decade as demonstrated by figure 1.
Figure
1 : Fragmented Audience - A Television
day for an aMap Home
Understanding
the repertoire of favourite channels
of audiences is essential for any
media marketers in the task to understand
the audience flow and programme sampling
issues. Though the number of channels
at the disposal of the audience is
ever increasing across genres; the
number of channels consumed daily
has not grown proportionately (refer
Oxygen May issue). If we take
time spent as a filter, only five
to six channels will emerge on which
a consumer spends more than 10% of
their daily viewing time on an average.
Ratings Based Theory of Audience Behaviour
 To
understand present and future complexity
of audience behaviour, transition
and loyalty, more work is required
in constructing theories of Audience
Behaviour and aMap research continues
to strive for creating more India
specific understanding of television
audience and sharing them with the
industry. As the programming structure
becomes more complex and the constraints
placed on viewer activity change.
For the time being it is not yet inconceivable
that many viewers travel from program
to program simply because of how those
programs are placed on the schedule.
Please feel free to send your comments on feedback@audiencemap.com and we can assure you that we will try and respond to all your information requirements through this periodical.
This periodical is mailed to its subscribers on the first working day of every month. If you have received this as a forward, write to oxygen@audiencemap.com for your own copy.
After the break
The next issue of OXYGEN will discuss the interplay between Marketing, Audience Measurement and Media Planning.
Periodicity
Oxygen is mailed to its subscribers on the first working day of the month. If you
wish to subscribe to this publication, write to oxygen@audiencemap.com.
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