Week 2: Worksheet 1 Completed

I have now finished worksheet 1 'The Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products'. This was a worksheet which focused on media products and their audience. I researched into BARB and RAJAR who are two research agencies who collect figures for TV and Radio. I have also created a Questionnaire which is a key method of gaining audience opinions and feedback on products. Through this research I have gained a lot of new knowledge surrounding media products and their audience, some of my knowledge gained includes:

• Why it is important for media producers to define their audience. I have learnt why it is important to many different media producers including: TV, Advertising, Magazines, Cinema, Newspapers, Radio and Internet. The reason for this is for the product to be a success, if the audience for the product is not defined the product will not sell.
• Another reason for defining audiences for media producers is advertising. This is important because advertising on both radio and TV is important for selling products. In terms of advertising, the adverts will appeal and be related to the audience listening or viewing a programme.
• How BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) collect their viewing figures. The process which they go through to gain the average viewing figures for many TV channels and programmes. I have documented this within my report I have written about audience research agencies.
• How RAJAR collect their listening figures, similar to BARB there is a process. The participant has to complete a listening diary for a week documenting: station listened to, when and on which platform. RAJAR also define their audience using the demographics, as they are able to define who listens to which radio stations and programmes.

I have also learnt how to I could define an audience in terms of which type of audiences watch which programmes on TV. I created a questionnaire for this, I asked different questions related to defining the audience and if I were to carry out this questionnaire I would get a good response from the questions asked. Hopefully I would gain a clear insight into the different audiences and what programmes they like to watch on TV.

Overall, through completing this worksheet I have understood why it is important to define the audience and I have learnt about two main audience research agencies.