LFTVD - Media Audiences D83

Question 1

What is BARB?

Answer 1

Broadcasters Audience Research Board - measures audiences for broadcast TV in the UK

Question 2

Why would Channel 4 want to categorise audiences?

Answer 2

To sell them to advertisers and sponsors

Question 3

Why must LFTVD attract and address global audiences?

Answer 3

For economic and cultural reasons

Question 4

How did D83 try to attract global audiences?

Answer 4

Genre hybridity and an international moment of history

Question 5

What was the main marketing strategy for D83?

Answer 5

Intertextual relay and word of mouth leading up to the opening of the series

Question 6

What are the advantages of showing a programme on C4?

Answer 6

It has a degree of audience loyalty linked to their ethos and brand image so this guarantees them a certain size and type of audience

Question 7

What % of audience share does C4 get?

Answer 7

About 5%

Question 8

When was D83 scheduled?

Answer 8

9pm on a Sunday - peak viewing time so up against some big mainstream dramas!

Question 9

How many viewers watched episode 1 live?

Answer 9

1.5 million

Question 10

How many watched with catch up?

Answer 10

2.5 million

Question 11

What is interesting about these viewing figures?

Answer 11

It is the highest rated foreign language programme on British TV

Question 12

Was D83 produced by public or commercial broadcasters?

Answer 12

Commercial (so want to make money!!)

Question 13

How did the international audiences influence D83?

Answer 13

It had to be innovative and have an essential difference - the representation of East Germany is exotic and different for audiences so produces a form of cultural tourism

Question 14

How does the narrative address international audiences?

Answer 14

Through key social and cultural issues of equality, politics, political/military intrigue

Question 15

Was this the first German language programme to air on an American network?

Answer 15

Yes (amazingly!) possible due to Anna Winger being American?

Question 16

Why would the representation of East Germany be so exotic for American audiences?

Answer 16

American audiences are brought up on the triumph of free market capitalism and notion as of socialism (as E Germany was) as “in-American” and therefore bad

Question 17

How might the representation of the Americans attract an American audience? (They were portrayed as gun-ho and not caring about the Germans, riding rough shod over them)

Answer 17

It would attract liberal Americans who are anti-gun laws/anti-war etc. (and these are the people more likely to watch a foreign programme)

Question 18

Who won the Cold War? Why is this relevant to American audiences?

Answer 18

America so they may have been attracted to the programme to see themselves as the winners. (And would all Americans recognise that the Americans are not being represented very positively?? It is a a subtle representation!)

Question 19

Who are the two pessimistic theorists who believe in passive audiences?

Answer 19

Gerbner and Bandura

Question 20

Who are the optimistic theorists who emphasise active audiences; looking at what the audience do with the media rather than what the media does to them?

Answer 20

Shirky and Jenkins

Question 21

Why is TV more likely to fit into Bandura’s theory?

Answer 21

The communication flow is one way

Question 22

How does Bandura’s theory work?

Answer 22

That values, judgement and conduct are influenced through media modelling. This can be seen as a sudden influence.

Question 23

How is Gerbner different to Bandura?

Answer 23

He argues that long term exposure will influence viewers through mainstreaming and mean world syndrome

Question 24

Why might passive theories no longer be relevant?

Answer 24

They were developed in the context of fewer TV channels, larger audiences before the current audience fragmentation

Question 25

Why might Shirky and Jenkins not be relevant?

Answer 25

There were no real textual poachers for D83 and LFTVD is very centralised so no room for audience producers

Question 26

What power does traditional scheduling have?

Answer 26

Appointment viewing, ritual viewing, shared experience and live tv

Question 27

How does D83 take advantage of traditional scheduling?

Answer 27

By having a long narrative arc within an episodic framework

Question 28

What would be a good example of Hall’s readings?

Answer 28

The dominant hegemonic reading would be that capitalism is the best political form however this could be contested by audiences who could take different readings. As a European drama it reflects more socialist ideologies which would be strange to a conservative America

Question 29

How does D83 try to transcend national identities?

Answer 29

Through cultural globalisation and hybridisation - the blending of cultural influences within a globalised context

Question 30

What does the scheduling of D83 allow us to assume about the demographics?

Answer 30

Upmarket demographics, primarily middle class

Question 31

Why does it target this audience?

Answer 31

The audience will need a cosmopolitan openness to other cultures and ideas plus cultural capital

Question 32

Why might audiences use D83?

Answer 32

Informing themselves
cultural tourism
Reinforcing their identity as a “citizen of the world”
converse with their peer group and confirm their joint sophisticated identity

Question 33

Historically people in Britain identified with certain channels. Why has that changed?

Answer 33

Growth of tv and different channels, changes in old social class structure, changes in identity politics (feminism and multiculturalism), the postmodern proliferation of identities in a consumerist media-dominated world