6.4.1 Audience Research Forms and
Industry Audience Research Characteristics Audience research can be divided in different forms. These are:
• Academic audience research
o (such as those undertaken by academics like Marie Gillespie, Ien Ang, James Webster, Patricia Phalen, the late Dallas Smyth, Elihu Katz, The Columbia school research of Paul Lazarsfeld, Dennis McQuail, David Morley, Stuart Hall et cetera)
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o (for example Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board, known as BARB, BBC Pulse Survey, ad hoc research conducted by media organisations)
• Audience research for policy purposes
o (for example as commissioned by Ofcom or the Department of Culture, Media and Sport)
These three forms can be further divided into various categories such as reactive or proactive research, qualitative or quantitative, various audience research paradigms that have shifted throughout the last 60 years such as the passive / active divide, research on industry audience research (e.g. Ang’s, 1991 and Webster, Phalen and Litchy’s 2006 analyses and critiques on ratings measurements) and so on. Although all these categories and forms have different purposes and ideological beliefs behind why they are done, they have two common characteristics. Firstly, all forms of audience research seek to understand the trends, viewing habits, behaviours et cetera of the same audience. Secondly, and as noted in Toynbee (2006), ‘uncertainty lies at the heart of the mass communications process’ (p. 93). In other words, all audience research types seek to understand the unpredictable nature of audience consumption.
While all three forms of audience research are important, this thesis is predominately involved in the analysis of industry audience research since, for various reasons that will be analysed below, this is what the BBC uses. Industry audience research for audiovisual media has traditionally been involved in finding ways to measure audience size and share (audience ratings) in order to give an indication to advertisers as to how much they should be charged when placing advertisements in programmes (see Beville, 1988; and Napoli, 2003). As audience ratings continues to be the most used type of industry audience research (regardless of its misgivings), it has expanded in other areas and is now used by different organisations and for different reasons, most notably by media organisations that are involved in creating the content. The ultimate goal of industry audience research conducted or commissioned by media organisations is to improve audience appreciation of the content as much as possible (Gunter, 2000). The reason is evident. The larger the size of the audience that enjoys the programme, the more the media organisation can charge advertisers for placing advertisements of their products and services. As McQuail illustrates (1997, p. 65),
In circumstances of intense intermedia competition and constant change it is not enough to have ‘historical’ knowledge of audience size and competition. It is also necessary to anticipate and lead audience tastes and interest. This is primarily a matter of professional skill, intuition, and luck, but it can be assisted by a deeper knowledge of what makes audiences kick.
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The BBC, while not involved directly in charging advertisers for consumption of their content, it still needs to justify its existence by assuring - through ratings and audience appreciation scores - that audiences consume its content (Born, 2004). A quote taken from broadcast (2007) illustrates this,
It was a dream come true for BBC1 on Saturday night as it came out victorious in a head-to-head talent show battle with ITV1. The corporation's main channel managed to attract 5.2 million (26.8%) in its search for the next stage Joseph in Any Dream Will
Do at 7.25pm, while ITV1's Grease is the Word fell
short with just 4.1 million
Within the context of programme-making, media organisations are involved in audience research both reactively, in which research is used on existing programmes, and proactively, whereby research is used to come up with specific ideas for future original programmes. Consequently, industry audience research is used by media organisations during all three stages of production (creation, reproduction, circulation) (see chapter one). The BBC Head of Audience and Planning confirmed this in the following way,
We’re involved throughout that process in each stage, across the whole process so we are constantly looking at BBC 1 and its future, we are looking at what therefore the big creative challenges are coming out of that, big strategic challenges, what are the creative challenges, right the way through to how can we help develop the next series or how can we help a team develop a new Sunday night drama…but also help the programme team develop the second series or 3rd series, so we work on Eastenders and Holby
(Interview Notes, 2007)
More specifically, reactively, research data can be used in the following two ways. First, ratings figures can be used in order to find the best possible timeslots and techniques for scheduling programmes (e.g. bridging, tentpoling, hammocking et cetera.); and second, audience appreciation tests of sample audiences can be conducted in order to get further insight into how existing programmes can be improved after the programme is already transmitted. Proactively, audience research can be used before the programme is transmitted and distributed to an audience. Hence supporters of audience research argue that when research is used proactively it can stimulate the creative process (Freeman, 2004) rather than rely on the ‘whimsy of the network baron’ (Tunstall, 1993, p.185). One area that falls in both reactive and proactive industry audience research is pretesting media content on ‘sample’ audiences in order to get feedback and ‘generate predictions of the media product’s performance’ (Napoli, 2003, p. 40). Pretesting is usually done in mini-theatres, or increasingly in in-home cable testing environments (Gitlin, 1983; Napoli, 2003).