This document provides guidance on classifying audiences for media products. It discusses several ways that audiences can be classified, including by standard occupation, lifestyle or psychographics, postcode or geodemographics, age, gender, and sexual orientation. For each classification, the document instructs the reader to research the topic, provide examples, and write a report explaining what each classification means. It emphasizes structuring the report in Microsoft Word and including illustrations and detailed examples.

1. Unit 4 – Media Audiences
and Products
Task 1 Part A – Classifying Audiences
Part A (working towards P1, M1 and D1)
Using each of the classifications of audiences below, write
a report which explains what each one means giving
clear, detailed illustrated examples for each.
Classification of audiences:
Standard Occupational Classification (ABC1 etc),
lifestyle or psychographics;
postcode or geo‐demographics;
age;
gender;
sexual orientation

2. How to structure your work
 Use the information in the following
slides to help structure your report
 Create in MS Word
 The more examples and description
you can give the better you will be
able to access Distinction criteria
 You can use your own examples not
just the ones given here
 Illustrate with suitable images

3. Background to audience
classification
 To be successful all media products
need an audience.
 You could make the best product but if
you are the only person that likes it
you will not make any money.
 An audience is the media version of a
consumer – someone who uses the
product e.g. reads, listens, watches, or
interacts with, like with a CD Rom

4. Background 2
 People like different things, and part of
the skill of making products is being
aware of who the audience is and the
different needs of different audiences.
 You can not make a product that only
appeals to you!!

5. Classifying audiences
 Some sectors use different terms from
others but the object is the same – to
find out how many of a particular type
of person there is in an audience or
consumer group so they can make the
product popular.

6. Audience Identification -
overview
 The media divide audiences into different categories for
which they design and create products. There are many
ways in which audiences can be identified:
 Age; audiences can be divided up into different age
groups...
 Standard Occupational Classification; This splits
viewers and readers by what they do for a living and
how much they earn…
 Psychographics; this very large word splits audiences
into the categories of HOW people live; their lifestyle,
beliefs, opinions and interests...
 Geodemographics; another very large word that simply
means WHERE people live...
 Gender; the splitting of audiences into male and
female...
 Audiences can also be split into sexual orientation.

7. Classification by Age
View the site below and create your
own summary of age groups used
http://www.audiencesuk.org/data-and-
resources/jargonbuster/A/age-group-or-age-
categories
Give examples of TV programs which may be
targeted at the age groups you have discussed.
Discuss how the “watershed” works in the UK and
how the TV programmes change after this time.
You may wish to look at how films are classified
by the BBFC e.g. U, PG

8. Classification by occupation
http://www.audiencesuk.org/data-and-resources/jargonbuster/S/social-
grade
http://www.nrs.co.uk/lifestyle.html
Use the links above to research and write about classification by
occupation. Also use the document occupational groupings
summary

9. Social Class
 Fill in the word document called social
class table with examples of jobs for
each category.
 Compare with others in the class to
see if you classify each social status
with the same jobs

10. Cross Over
 Even when a media product is aimed at
a specific audience, there may be some
overlap
 For example, a TV program aimed at
children aged 3 to 6 shown in the
afternoon, it may also be watch by the
child’s mother.
 Other Examples, magazines in dentists
surgeries
 Audiences may not be targeted at these
people in these cases but exposed to
them and products can break in to a new

11. Where people live – postcodes
or
geodemographics people think
 This can effect the way
and what will interest them
 Planning content by post code or area,
can make the content more relevant to
the audience.
 Local newspapers and radio stations
cover stories relevant to local areas.
 For example in heavy snow, people
often turn to local radio stations to find
out if local schools are closed.

12. postcodes or
geodemographics 2
TV companies set out to use the data found in a
geodemographic areas to find out what kind of
programs/products to target the people which
live in that area because of the behaviours that
may go on in that area.
For instance, Granada News Local North West is
only in the North West area and the Granada
South East news is only going to be broadcast in
the south east region.
Give other examples.

13. Ethnicity
 This is about origins, where we come from,
where are parents and grandparents come
from.
 Everybody has origins in one or more ethnic
groups
 Although grouping people according to
ethnicity can be one way of identifying
people’s interests, it is important that we
respect people from all ethnic groups, no
mater how different they are from ourselves.
 Task – open the document, “census data
ethnicity” and write a summary about
ethnic classification in England.

14. Gender
 Gender is a relatively simple way of
classifying audiences because there are only
2 groups, Male and Female.
 Most people do not object to saying which
group they belong to in questionnaires, letters
or emails.
 Having only to genders to think about can be
misleading though, it is too easy to think all
women think the same and all men think the
same! This is not the case!
 Some soap operas and comedies appeal to
both genders and media producers can
double their audience if they can appeal to
both male and female audiences.

15. Gender Task
 List the magazines which appeal to
the following categories:
◦ Male
◦ Female
◦ Both Sexes
 Compare to others in the group

16. Gender and Magazines
 Look at the following site and look at
the male/ female divide on popular
magazines and news papers. You can
down load the figures as a
spreadsheet and use to illustrate your
assignment with some discussion of
what they show for different
magazines
 http://www.nrs.co.uk/toplinereadership.html

17. Gender
http://www.ltcconline.net/lukas/gender/pages/gaze.ht
m
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MaleGaz
e
Give examples of the “male gaze” and research the
”female gaze” looking at different areas such as
comics, films, TV, Print, Games.
Does TV do a good job in doing programs for just the
Male gender or the Female gender? Give examples
of such programmes. Think about the programme
“Sex in the City” – female audience? “Friends” -
Both? “Top Gear” – Male Audience? Give your own
examples.

18. Sexual Orientation
 Not everyone is heterosexual and some media
products exploit differences in peoples sexuality
in order to attract audiences.
 In early TV show, gay people were often very
stereotyped and concentrated on how their
appearance, dress, speech etc differed from
straight men and often they were called offensive
names.
 Today such portrayals are rare not least because
the rights of gay men and lesbians has improved
in recent years but for economic sense.
Offending people who could be your audience
does not help sales or ratings
 Media products aimed at Lesbian, bisexual and
homosexual communities are now quite
common, for example a leading newspaper for
this community is the gay times.

19. Sexual orientation 2
 http://www.media-
awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyp
ing/gays_and_lesbians/gay_film.cfm
 How have gays and lesbians been
portrayed in the film industry as an
example?