Audiences: Trends, Profiles and Patterns

Audience types: 

• Passive= the product is received but the audience is not choosing to engage with it.
• Active= the choice is made to consume the product, and to engage with it.

• Preferred= the target audience whom the product is aimed at.
• Oppositional= the potential target audience whom an industry needs to persuade.

• Traditional= stick to safety and familiarity by going to the cinema and buying DVDs.
• Hedonist= take risks by watching new, different and challenging conventional films.
• Post-modern= use new ways of watching films, such as streaming and sweding etc.

The reading is how an audience receives a media product. If an audience has a negotiated reading of a film, this means that it has multiple meanings and interpretations.

In his article titled Audiences: Trends, Profiles and Patterns: What People Go to See, Why and How to Reach Them, Pete Buckingham (Head of Distribution and Exhibition, UK Film Council) suggests that age and demographics (education and/or disposable income) influence audience patterns. For example, 40% of cinema audience are aged 15-24. Whereas, 20% (half of the previous age group) of cinema audience are over 54s. 38% of cinema audience are aged 35-44s. Buckingham claims that age also influences the frequency of cinema trips; 60% of heavy cinema goers are aged 15-35, 50% of medium cinema goers are aged 25-44 and 32% of light cinema goers are aged 55+. Regarding demographics, ABC1s form between 60 and 66% of cinema audience. 

I would say that my audience type (regarding viewing habits) is either an impressionable socialite or an impulsive materialist.

I would be an impressionable socialite because

• I am aged under 25.
• I like blockbusters.
• I'm led by ads.

I would be an impulsive materialist because

• I enjoy an evening of film-dinner-drinks.
• Word of mouth is key.

However, these audience categories are overly specific in my opinion, as there are some elements that will not be relevant to that category of audience. For example, although I would see myself in the 'impulsive materialist' category, I would not say I was 'impulsive' or that I was a 'fashion victim'. The second page of the following presentation will display these categories:

Audience pete buckingham what people go to see from Elaine Humpleby