Media Audiences

TV Channels cannot look at sales figures or other quantitive research unlike Video Game Publishers, Therefore they use different methods of Audience Research.

There are many different types of audience research, they are listed and explained below

  • Trends –
  • Surveys – A way of acquiring appropriate or desired information relative to your current project.
  • Focus Groups – A selected group of volunteers from the general public to test the outcome of a project before it is released into the public sector.
  • Quantitive Data – A series of figures showing the public responses to something such as a survey or TV Show.
  • Qualitative Data – Detailed responses from the public regarding a specific product or service.
  • Research Agencies – Organisations are available to gather or share research so as to speed up the process for other companies or even members of the general public.

Defining Media Audiences

Quantitive Data

Define Quantitive

Quantitive Data is Information expressing an amount or range and usually is a mathematical figure (Source: https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=2219).

The data can be found in multiple-choice survey questions and on the internet from certain websites run by Research Agencies.

Benefits & Drawbacks
  • The data can be very easy and quick to analyse speeding up some processes.
  • Generalize the information gathered to quickly summarise the issues or successful areas of your work.
  • Is usually information that can be measured and represented with figures.
Screenshot Examples

pieChart

in the screenshot above you can see someone has researched the public opinion on pies and then placed the responses as percentage figures in a pie chart for easier viewing.

Qualitative Data

Define Qualitative

Qualitative Data is data that cannot be measured and often contains a particular opinion may be about the texture of a new product. (Source: http://www.shmoop.com/probability-statistics/qualitative-quantitative-data.html).

This type of data can be found in open word questions on surveys or through the comments on social media and sites such as YouTube.

Benefits & Drawbacks
  • Subjects can be evaluated in depth
  • The research has an idea of what answers to expect from others
  • Gives the researcher a clearer understanding of the individual people in their audience and a better understanding of their opinions on the subject
  • Can be heavily influenced by the researcher resulting in BIAS responses and is dependant on the skill of the reader.
  • Processing the responses can be time-consuming for the researcher which slows production time.
  • The data received is difficult to represent using visual methods.
Screenshot Examples

Capture

Above is a screenshot of a Qualitative question inside an online survey and the responses it received are listed underneath the question. You can see that none of the answers are the same and this is how you can see the difference between qualitative and quantitive research.

Research Agencies

The role of a Research agency such as vision one is to gather market research and also offer their services to clients or companies. This is very helpful for some clients as it allows them to spend more time on something more important than collecting market research.

RAJAR

The Radio Joint Audience Research Company record all radio listenings on a wide variety of stations to then report the information back to the broadcasting station. Information such as Psychographics and statistics of how many and how long the public is listening for.

The top Radio Station by hours listened for the quarterly of June 2017 is Radio One.

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BARB

Barb is an acronym for Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board and this is a research company focused on aiding broadcasting services or clients to gain research to be shared through their chosen broadcasting medium. BARB use a panel of volunteered homes to determine the demographic profile of viewers watching Shows. The data collected by BARB is sent to clients using an application made available to clients only, the data shown by this application can record up to 4 weeks worth allowing clients to plan ahead of time. some information within 7 days will be available to the general public and is considered “the gold standard” meaning this data should match that of a client if they are to be considered a successful broadcaster/broadcasting establishment.

Using the Public section of their website I have the Top viewed programs on the following channels during the week of 18th-24th September

  • BBC1 – Strictly Come Dancing
  • BBC2 – University Challenges
  • Channel 4 – The Great British Bakeoff
  • Channel 5 – Paddington Station
  • ITV – Coronation Street