target audience task

1. Soap Opera Genre –
Target Audience
Name: Tom Owen
Candidate Number: 3103
Center Name: St. Andrew’s Catholic School
Center Number: 64135
OCR Media Studies – A2 Level
Unit G324: Advanced Portfolio

2. Hartley’s 7 subjectives
The main target audience for East Enders would probably be mainly
females as these sort of programs contain gossip and mostly contain
controversial topics, which may be stereotyped to be more appealing for
women to engage with on TV, rather than males. Furthermore, the main
target audience of a program such as this one may be stereotyped to be
mainly aged from 16- 30 as, this age range may be stereotyped to be the
main age range which would find the topics included in a soap opera, as
interesting. Lastly, this is the age range who can probably feel that they
can relate top the included topics the most.
The ethnicities of people who would watch East Enders would be white
and black ethnic groups, as these are the types of groups which are
mainly represented throughout East Enders. Therefore, the soap opera is
going to be found more appealing to white and black ethnic groups.

3. Socio-economic needs
The stereotypical viewers of a soap opera such as east Enders would
be in the groups C1-E, as these are the groups which are mainly
represented throughout East Enders. Therefore, it will be seen as more
appealing to the groups which are represented. For instance, East
Enders follows the lives of working class and lower class citizens.
Therefore it will attract these classes to watch the soap opera. This is
important because It conveys that upper class citizens would not be
interested in watching Soap Opera’s because their class is not
represented in popular ones, such as east Enders. Therefore, Soap
operas such as east Enders would only be mainly appealing to socio-
economic classes of C1-E.

4. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
The target audience attracted to ‘East Enders’ would typically be
‘survivors’ who would watch each new episode in the hope that
dilemmas would be resolved. This is due to the fact that soap operas
often contain a lot of ‘drama’, which leaves the audience in suspense
and waiting anxiously for the next episode the following evening.
Therefore, this makes them an appropriate group to be attracted to a
Soap Opera, as they often contain multiple controversial themes such
as ‘Alcohol, drugs and divorce’ etc, in order to create drama within the
program. Therefore, we will make sure to make connotations towards
these specific themes to ensure that we attract our target audience.

5. Psychographics
The target audience of East Enders would usually be both people in
school and working class citizens. This is due to the fact that’s the
program is on during the evening at around 7. This is important
because this is the time that most students and working class people
are home after rush hour and want to relax. This therefore makes this
soap opera appealing to them, as it is on at a convenient time.
Furthermore, the main characters which are usually featured in soap
operas are stereotypically younger characters such as teenagers and
people in their early 20’s. therefore, his will make the main attraction
created for consumers from these age groups.

6. Katz
As far as Katz goes, the target audience for a soap opera such as East
Enders may ‘personally identify’ with certain characters and topics in
the program and this may be why they watch is. For instance, if a
consumer has previously been subject to abuse from a loved one or a
partner, they will ‘Personally identify’ with characters who are subject
to the same abuse in a Soap opera. Therefore, we will be sure to
include themes which a mass audience will be able to relate to.
However, it could also be down as just ‘entertainment’ purposes
instead, where they may choose to watch the program as a way to
relax.