Critical Approaches L1

Lesson 1

Grading Criteria

1. Understand how media producers define audience for their products.
2. Understand how media producers create products for specific audiences.
3. Understand how media audiences respond to media products.
4. Be able to develop responses to media products.

Key words:

• Mainstream - appeal to a wide audience and generally make large products. Usually big budget productions.
• Niche - aimed at satisfying specific general needs. Aimed at a narrowly defined market segment. Generally lower budget.
• Alternative - doesn't try to maximize profits. Seeks broad and non-elite audience.

Segmenting Audiences

(How media producers define their audiences)

• Demographics - Gender, age and social class. How people are grouped together.
• Psychographics - Study of personalty, values, attitudes, interests and lifestyles.