.. Audience - key concepts ..

An audience is masses of people who can be persuaded to buy products through advertising.

.. Historical background ..
150 years ago things that show media such as television, radio, film or computers did not exist and to keep themselves busy they would and to keep themselves busy/entertained they did things such as reading or taking part in group activities to create a musical or a play. Nowaddays media is consumed either independtly or in small groups. The media can be seen as bringing people together and also keeping them apart, for example parents worry that video games are keeping children locked up inside their room however programmes such as soaps bring people to come together. one major fear from consuming media is that since the same media is being consumed by millions of people around the world and often consumed alone (which is called mass media according to many theorists), there is no-one to tell these consumers what is good or bad so they begin to see things in more of a negative way.

example of theorist:-
Herbert Blumerdescribed it in 1950:-
-First, its membership may come from all walks of life, and from all
distinguishable social strata; it may include people of different class position, of
different vocation, of different cultural attainment, and of different wealth. .....

-Secondly, the mass is an anonymous group, or more exactly is composed of
anonymous individuals [Blumer means anonymous in the sense that unlike the
citizens of earlier communities, the people who are members of the mass
audience for the media do not know each other].

-Third, there exists little interaction or change of experience between members of
the mass. They are usually physically separated from one another, and, being
anonymous, do not have the opportunity to mill as do members of the crowd.

-Fourth, the mass is very loosely organised and is not able to act with the unity of
a crowd.

.. Defining audiences: mass market ..
media producers and institutions like to consider audiences in groups. This is particularly true of advertisers, who have led the way in targeting groups of consumers. The producers of media texts and the advertisers are very interested in these audiences who they could contact through the new media. To investigate exactly how large their share of the mass market was, television companies and advertisers pioneered new techniques of market research which involved quantitative surveys where they attempted to count how many people they reached.
Todd Gitlin said:
“The numbers only sample sets tuned in, not necessarily shows watched, let
alone grasped, remembered, loved, learned from, deeply anticipated, or mildly
tolerated”