King of the Hill? Seeking the New in Audience Research

This article looks at the ways of finding novelty in communication and audience research and questions the necessity to seek constant innovation in conquering new territories in audience research. Based on both personal experiences and those from the PhD students across Europe, the article maps five Basic elements where novelty in audience research is sought—new technologies, new countries, new audiences, interdisciplinarity and cross-media. The article argues that despite the constant pressure to innovate, there are important elements of value in traditional audience research that need to be kept, including methodological diversity and often repeated feel for the triangulation of audiences, producers and text. In this combination of keeping the old and seeking the new in audience research, the discipline can be seen growing richer and more diverse with every added contribution.     

“News with an Accent”: Hispanic Television and the Re-negotiation of US Latino Speech

Using Bourdieu's concept of “linguistic capital” as an analytical concept, I examine the value of language as both a means of comprehension and a product that has currency in the television marketplace. Focusing on Fusion, an upstart cable network designed to engage Latinos civically and in English, I examine the ways in which television networks employ language as a device through which to create audiences. I argue that Fusion and other networks are attempting to re-constitute the Latino audience in ways that more closely align with the dominant culture, leading to forms of erasure that challenge the legitimacy of Spanish altogether. I further argue that in the process of pursuing the acculturated Latino, the network pivots away from those most isolated from civic discourses.     

The Duality of Structure in China's National Television Market: A Network Analysis of Audience Behavior

This study adapts Giddens' structuration theory to assess audience agency and its relationship with media structures. It employs network analysis to examine the co-evolution of audience duplication patterns and elements of media structure in China's national television market. The findings reveal that Chinese audiences tend to gravitate to channels with greater market share, higher household penetration rates, and more drama programming. Furthermore, channels tend to adjust their levels of drama programming relative to patterns of audience duplication in the long run. Finally, there was evidence of higher-order patterns of audience behavior, suggesting the existence of channel repertoires, and market concentration.     

Engaging the Audience in a Digitised Television Production Process

This article discusses producer practices and the reasons why they engage their audience in the production process. In a digitised media context, audiences have become more visible, mainly through social media, and have more means to participate. Our research deconstructs the production process of a particular television programme by means of the “hierarchy of influences” model, which separates micro and macro levels that influence production. It draws on in-depth interviews with all editors of Flemish current affairs programme De Afspraak (The Appointment) and on a three-month participatory observation. We conclude that immersive ways of engaging the audience are applied in our specific case. More broadly, we argue that although practices change, pre-existing norms and values about the television audience remain central to how producers engage their audience through digital and social media.     

When Everyone is Laughing: The Presence,Characteristics, and Enjoyment of Disparagement Humor in Online TV

Two studies examine disparagement humor in online television and reasons people enjoy witnessing the comedic ridicule of other people. In Study 1, a quantitative content analysis, coders documented the prevalence and characteristics of disparagement humor in online television clips and its reception by audiences. Disparagement humor appeared in one in four video clips, often targeting physical appearance and weight. Studio audiences, other television characters, and online commenters often validated disparagement humor. Study 2, an experiment, investigated the contribution of existing prejudice and third-party audience reaction to the reported enjoyment of disparagement humor and willingness to share the insulting humor with others. Both validating audience reaction and existing prejudice positively predicted enjoyment of disparagement humor. Further, enjoyment of the disparagement humor significantly predicted participants’ self-reported likelihood to share the insulting jokes with acquaintances.     

A Network Analytic Approach to Audience Behavior and Market Structure: The Case of China and the United States

This study adopts a network analytic approach to understand media audiences in relation to media markets, bridging the literature on audience behavior and media economics. Using audience data in the Chinese and U.S. markets, we apply multi-level measures to compare audience fragmentation patterns, a key indicator of market structure, across television channels. Drawing on McQuail's four–stage fragmentation model, we find the Chinese television market exhibits the Core-Peripheral model where a few channels dominate the marketplace and the rest are viewed by niche segments of the audience. In contrast, the U.S. market represents the Pluralism model with extremely high levels of audience duplication across channels, suggesting overlapping patterns of exposure throughout the market rather than isolated segments.     

DD and PTV as victims of media globalisation

Mainstream discourses on the globalisation of media that delineate the emergence of privately owned television channels in the periphery country as evening out metropolitan domination are belied by concrete evidence. This essay argues that the rise of southern players has undermined state broadcasting rather than dismantling ‘media imperialism’. Based on two case studies, Pakistan Television (PTV) and Doordarshan (DD), this study demonstrates that the actual, if inadvertent, victim of globalisation has been state broadcasting and an associated developmentist model of television. As a result the decline of state-led television channels has radically transformed television systems in India and Pakistan. While DD and PTV view their audiences as citizens, the globalisation of media has resulted in a commodification of television audiences. Instead of public interest, audience maximisation has become the dominant logic of television systems in both these countries. In the process, developmentist television systems have been replaced by the commercially driven systems.     

Rethinking Program Diversity Assessment: An Audience-Centered Approach

The marketplace metaphor that provides the foundation for the regulation of electronic media assumes not only that a diversity of content is available, but also that audiences expose themselves to this diversity. This exposure dimension of the diversity issue has been largely absent from conventional diversity assessments. This article proposes a method of assessing exposure diversity and conducts a preliminary analysis using 1995 Nielsen data for prime-time television. The marketplace metaphor that provides the foundation for the regulation of electronic media assumes not only that a diversity of content is available, but also that audiences expose themselves to this diversity. This exposure dimension of the diversity issue has been largely absent from conventional diversity assessments. This article proposes a method of assessing exposure diversity and conducts a preliminary analysis using 1995 Nielsen data for prime-time television.     

The relationship of various audience composition factors to television program types

The mountains of data amassed by the various audience research services are rarely mined for the underlying factors of audience behavior. Published as part of the rating service reports is a vast amount of qualitative information that can be used to build a coherent picture of some of the many audiences to broadcast programs. (See “Qualitative Information Concerning Audiences of Network Television Programs” by Harrison B. Sommers, Journal op Broadcasting, Vol. V, No. 3, pp.147–160, Spring 1961.) The present study offers some predictable and some unpredictable findings from such published data on television program types and audience composition.     

Adlai E. Stevenson's United Nations audience

As United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Stevenson, with the assistance of his staff, analyzed and prepared to address three widely varied audiences: the primary audience, his fellow diplomats; his secondary audience, representatives of the world press and the radio and television media; and a spontaneous and ever‐changing group of daily visitors. To influence these audiences and to seek the widest level of support and the least antagonism for American policies, Stevenson had to concern himself with their functions, attitudes, and loyalties.     

What Children Watch When They Watch TV: Putting Theory Into Practice

If advertisers and programmers are to keep pace with the rapid structural and contextual changes in broadcast and cable television, and maintain their young audiences, they must gain a better understanding of children's viewing motives and viewing patterns. The authors assess the interrelatedness of television use motives and viewing patterns, and investigate perceptions of viewer loyalty network and station identification, and the generalizability of these perceptions to times when local television stations change network affiliation. This study profiles the child televiewing audience and expands the known parameters of television viewer uses and gratifications by identifying three distinctive viewer archetypes-medium- oriented viewers, network-oriented viewers, and station-oriented viewers.     

Program audience duplication: A study of television inheritance effects

Inheritance effects, especially high levels of audience duplication between adjacent programs, are a widely observed but little understood feature of audience behavior. This study places inheritance effects within a theoretical model of television program choice that attributes the general phenomenon to underlying patterns of audience availability. The absolute level of audience duplication between adjacent programs broadcast on the same network is determined by the rating of each program, the structure of available program options, and similarities in program type.     

Reconsidering Reflexivity: Audience Research and Reality Television

Critiques of reality television assume that audiences enjoy watching participants’ humiliation or adopt the reforming injunctions of the shows. This audience research project investigates how people who watch personal makeover shows (The Biggest Loser, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Starting Over, and What Not to Wear) use these texts in meaningful ways. Data from 1,800 survey respondents and 130 interviewees demonstrate that audiences use the shows to be self reflexive, while they also are highly reflexive about media production processes. Furthermore, they are reflexive about their participation in research about a disparaged television genre. Audiences’ perception of surveillance and shame in the shows suggest how reflexivity can provide a critical distance from the programs but is not necessarily ideologically freeing.     

Discursive texts,reflexive audiences: Global trends in television news texts and audience reception

This study examines the process of media globalization at the level of meaning generation (by television news texts) and interpretation (by audiences) based on the analysis of news‐texts and focus groups from four countries. It is suggested that the narrative of television news is discursive: it provides a specific vision of cultural “others”. At the audience level there is the emergence of a global culture of critical media consumption. This reflexive mode is born of a familiarity with the narrative conventions of the genre and the institutional imperatives of the media industries.     

The Impact of Market Segmentation on African American Frequency,Centrality, and Status in Television Advertising

Market segmentation made communication with the advertising audience dependent upon the audience segment. African Americans were the first racial minority group identified as having economic viability as a target market that could be reached through advertising content and placement. A content analysis of 358 prime-time television advertisements for African American and general audiences revealed that African Americans are still playing a subordinate role, even in advertising targeted to them. Market segmentation has increased the breadth, but not necessarily the depth of African American advertising depictions.     

The Case for Audience Isolation: Language and Culture as Predictors of Advertiser Investment

Abstract

In what has become an increasingly multilingual United States, growing numbers of television advertisers have begun targeting foreign language speakers. Because of the increased cost and effort in crafting unique ad campaigns, however, the factors behind this investment decision are explored. Using an online survey, advertisers (N?=?1,150) were asked how they valued various demographic audience traits as they considered potential target markets. T tests revealed significant differences between foreign language and non-foreign language advertisers' audience preferences. Logistic regression showed that, contrary to previous audience valuation findings, household income was not a primary factor in foreign language audience investment decisions. Rather, advertisers who valued household income more were less likely to invest in foreign language audiences in the United States, with language dependency and cultural traits predicting a greater likelihood of investment. The Audience Investment by Isolation Model is offered, which can help explain the investment decision-making process by advertisers as they weigh demographic audience traits, audience isolation strategies, and costs.     

Toward Ethical Cyberspace Audience Research: Strategies for Using the Internet for Television Audience Studies

This article examines the possibilities for qualitative audience study afforded by the Internet, carefully detailing both the benefits and dangers o f such research. In answer to methodological issues resulting from online communication with subjects, the essay calls for the application o f various feminist and anthropological methodological practices, and considers methodological dilemmas related to perceived privacy, natural data and lurking, informed consent procedures, balancing anonymity, and data accessibility. In the course o f outlining methodological considerations especially salient when finding audiences through Internet spaces, we reflect on our own dilemmas in designing studies that meet the ethical standards of feminist methodology.     

Equal time: Origins of section 18 of the radio act of 1927

This study examined the effects of television network affiliation switches that took place in the Miami market in January, 1989. Results indicate viewer loyalty to local news, especially early local news, although not necessarily to local stations, and probably little to network news. Network affiliation results in primetime audiences significantly larger than those of independent stations. The findings demonstrate that structural variables are stable and predictable indicators of audience behavior.     

‘No hugging please,we are Muslims’: Akademi Fantasia,Malay television audiences and the negotiation of global popular cultural forms

This paper analyses the audience reception of the Malaysian reality television programme Akademi Fantasia (AF), which first aired in 2003 and completed its ninth season in 2011. AF has been an influential pioneer in the national television industry, inaugurating the trend of local reality shows and weathering intense competition from similar shows to remain at the top of the ratings chart over the last decade. Based on the Mexican talent search show, La Academia, Malaysia's AF is a unique hybrid blend of an Idol-style talent contest and Big Brother observational spectacle. The article draws on primary audience research to investigate the ways in which Malay audiences interpret the potentially incommensurable cultural meanings generated within the context of a localised version of a global television format. Chua's concept of ‘identification and distancing’ is employed as a framework to analyse the complex ways in which perceived Malay ‘cultural norms’ assume primacy as interpretative lenses for audience evaluations of the show and measures of its local difference from similar global cultural products. The research also reveals how these cultural norms are themselves being negotiated by the audience as part of the everyday experience of inhabiting coexisting local and global popular cultural spaces. The analysis focuses on audience understandings and pleasure in the programme in relation to fashion and taste; the behaviour of the official judges; voyeurism and conflict in ‘backstage’ coverage; and emotional intimacy onstage in the public performance component of the programme.     

Ritual Television

As in other southern European countries, television was introduced in Portugal in the second half of the 1950s through the founding of a public broadcasting station. Reception was implemented very gradually over the 1960s, by conspicuously developing collective ways of viewing. In this text, we draw on oral history in order to retrace relevant habits, events and content especially for women, a particular type of audience in the markedly patriarchal context of the Estado Novo dictatorship. Within the context of collective reception of early television in Portugal, we highlight a type of experience that was particularly significant for some female audiences: the reception of Catholic transmissions. The concepts of hegemony, ritual and everyday practices assist in the analysis of such memories. These conspicuous television rituals seemed to regulate female practices, but they could also offer women some opportunities for new experiences.