Audience

Target Audience

Audience is a very important concept. A common concept in radio marketing is the target audience. This means the types of listeners that you are trying to reach: not just the listeners you already have, but also the listeners you should have, if only they can discover your station and realize what great programming it has.

Target audiences are usually described in demographic terms, the type of information collected by a Census: age group, sex, education, occupation, and so on. As most variation in radio listening is related to the age of the audience, target audiences are most often expressed in terms of age groups. Sometimes education level is a secondary target. If several stations in a market are already aiming at the same age group as yours, you could consider targeting, say, people with above-average education in that age group. For this to work, your programs have to be designed for that group. All radio stations have their own specific target audience which they aim to please and maintain their attention/interest by proving them with news stories coverages that relates to them most. When providing the listeners with news reports, Stations have to be able to figure out which news story fits the criteria of their target audience best to broadcast on their programme.  The news stories broadcasted will need to be something that would interest as well as concern them most, they will need to highlight all audience profiling which will enable them to do. Such as psychographics, Geographic’s and demographics. For example a station such as BBC1 is known to always broadcast national news, stories that are important to UK audience. Typically placed within London. The news is relevant to the audience nationally, as each person can be effected within every area, e.g., Manchester Birmingham, London etc. The target audience for BBC are people age 15-29 which means the news coverage will be more light-hearted and more informal that a station such as BBC Radio who’s target audience is for people much older. BBC1 had a news story of George Shelley a member of a band called “Union J” revealing that he is Bisexual. This story is suitable for the target audience as it is based on a young boy band which BBC1 target audience will most likely be familiar, and take some interest on the story, compared to an older person who may have never heard of the boy band. This sort of news story published by BBC1 goes to show that they know they target audience and are very specific on which story they know will draw them in. 

Primary-Primary audience is the "main body" of viewers, the average. Also known as target audience. These are people are those who will regularly tune in to listen to the radio station as they enjoy the content of their programmes as well as the music played.  

Secondary-A secondary audience refers to an individual who may for example be sat in a car with someone who decides to put their favourite radio station, which forces the secondary passenger to have to sit and listen to it. EG a mother could be listen to Key 103 whose target audience are for female age 25-43, with her children at the back, driving them to school. This may not appeal to her children as they are not the target audience for the station but they have no choice but to listen as it’s there mum’s car and they not have a say on what’s put.

Tertiary-A tertiary audience to a radio station is an individual who may have stumble across a radio station and has decided listened to their programme only once, this could sorely just be because a certain celebrity they admire will be featured on the show or someone may have told them to listen to the station at a specific time as something they like or have interest on will be featured on the programme.

The links below tranfers to 3 padlet pages which content contains the representation of three radio stations that appeal to different speciffic target audiences in a variety of ways.

http://padlet.com/cath_davies/3mjn73nvdw
http://padlet.com/cath_davies/3kvbppn672zu
http://padlet.com/cath_davies/ny3b38aznpnf