Defining and Persuading Audiences

Abstract

The audience has always been an essential feature of a media text. While there are examples of acclaimed works not being released in the lifetime of the creator (Schubert’s Ninth Symphony and John Kennedy Toolé s The Confederacy of Dunces, 1980), most texts do, at least initially, reach an audience. For some media, the audience is self-evident, for example, in the number of units sold for DVDs or how many seats are taken in the cinema or theatre. Broadcasters, however, do not have this luxury and terrestrial radio and television stations do not know that they are actually being listened to or watched. So when broadcasting began in the early twentieth century it became immediately necessary to find out if the audience did exist and who they were.