Matakuliah : O0394 – Teknik Reportase dan News Caster
Tahun
: 2010
The Audience and The Feedback
Pertemuan 25 - 26
Learning Objectives
Media communication cannot be separated from its
audience and feedback. This section will discuss
audience and feedback with focus on a couple of
factors: (1) framing to which viewers the programs
are assigned, and (2) measuring the rating of the
audience.
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Framing the Audience
How the word ‘Audience’ should be defined?
The word ‘audience’ is familiar as the collective term
for the ‘receivers’ in the simple sequential model of
mass communication process (source, channel,
message, receiver, effect)
Allor (1988): “The audience exists nowhere; it inhabits
no real space, only positions within analytic discourses.”
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Framing the Audience
 Audience can be defined in different ways: by place (as in
the case of local media), by people (as when a medium is
characterized by an appeal to a certain age group, gender,
political belief or income category), by particular type of
medium or channel involved (technology and organization
combined), by the content of its messages (genres, subject
matters, styles), by time (as when one speaks of the
‘daytime’ or ‘primetime’ audience, or audience that is
fleeting and short term compared with one that endures).5
Framing the Audience
 Audience are both a product of social context
(which leads to shared cultural interests,
understandings and information needs) and a
response to a particular pattern of media provision;
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Audience-Related Issues (1/4)
Certain issues towards audience, media, and their
behavior
 Media use as addiction
Excessive media use has often been viewed as harmful
and unhealthy, leading to addiction, dissociation from
reality, reduced social contacts and diversion from
education; with television as the most usual suspect
followed by video games and computers;
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Audience-Related Issues (2/4)
 Audience behavior as active or passive
Audience as mass is passive since it is incapable of
collective action; individual acts of media choice,
attention and response can be active in terms of
degree of motivation, attention, involvement, pleasure,
critical response, connection with the rest of life. There
is a tendency, whether explicitly or not, to view active
media use as ‘better’ than passive;
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Audience-Related Issues (3/4)
 Alternative media perceptions of the audience
The audience can be approached in normative
and relational terms with a genuine
communicative purpose: its composition, its
engagement with communicators and content, the
quality of attention and response, its loyalty, its
commitment and continuity;
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Audience-Related Issues (4/4)
 The implications of new media technology
The pros and contras on the implication of new media
technology towards audience:
- more freedom and diversity of communication and
reception;
- the audience will be more fragmented and will lose their
national, local or cultural identity;
- there will be an increasing gap between the media rich
and the media poor.
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Why so Important…
Why is it important to know your audience
- Accounting for sales
- Measuring actual and potential reach for purposes of
advertising
- Manipulating and channeling audience choice behavior
- Looking for audience market opportunities
- Product-testing and improving communication effectiveness
- Meeting responsibilities to serve an audience
- Evaluating media performance in a number of ways
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Rating the Audience (1/4)
The rating process
 Measuring TV viewing
A research company will conduct a set of research
activities on television viewers. The random samples are
collected from household. Four times a year the
information is collected and that measurement period is
called “sweeps”.
The measurement results will be used by local stations to
determine advertising rates.
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Rating the Audience (2/4)
 Processing the data
The data collected by the research company then
processed overnight and made available for
customer access the next day.
 The ratings books
Each rating books contain demographic information
of the audience, and technical problems the
stations may have during the rating period.
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Rating the Audience (3/4)
There are 3 (three) terms and concepts used in television rating:
1. Household using television (HUT)
The number or the percentage of households that have a television
set during a specific time of period.
2. Rating
The percentage or proportions of all households with a television set
watching a particular program at a particular time. A rating of 10
means that 10 percent of all the homes in the market were watching a
specific program. Ratings consider all households in the market not
just those with tv set in use.
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Rating the Audience (4/4)
3. Share of the audience (share)
The total number of household watching a particular
program at a specific time divided by the total number
of households using television. The share is based only
on those households that actually have their TV sets
turned on.
Some programs can have the shame share but have
different ratings.
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Calculating the Rating (1/2)
The formula for calculating rating and share
Ratings: Number of households watching a program
Total number of households in market
Share: Number of households watching a program
Total number of HUT
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Calculating the Rating (2/2)
For example:
There are 1,000 households in the market. At 18 pm
100 of those 1,000 households have their TV sets on.
Of the 100 households, 20 are watching “Evening
News”.
Rating: 20/1000 = 2%
Share: 20/100 = 20%
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The Significance of Rating
 Ratings can be used to determine what types of people are
watching. The advertisers are more interested in audience
type than audience size;
 Ratings can be used to persuade the advertisers to put
their money in their station;
 Ratings can be used to see how much viewing occurs in
neighboring communities-if the ratings show substantial
viewing, the station might want to increase coverage of the
areas to encourage continued viewing and better ratings.18
Other Audience Research
 Music Research: Call-outs, Auditorium Testing
 Market Research: Production Research,
Audience Segmentation Research
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Closing
At the end of this discussion, it is expected that the
students will understand how the feedback from
audience can actually be measured by using certain
method. However, it must also be known that although
such measurement can be very helpful in finding out
the audience’s response toward a television program
the measurement is not that perfect at all.
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