As a consumer, you don’t tend to think about the process in which people in the media take to generate a target audience for a Television program. You don’t even tend to think about target audiences on a whole as you sit down, relaxing at home watching a program which appeals to you, so I would like to start by talking about Human Universe as a television program and some of the features this program has to attract a target audience.
Firstly, Human Universe is a documentary series shown on BBC2. It started on the 7th October 2014 at 9pm and was then shown every Tuesday at 9pm for five weeks. According to the Guardian, this program focuses on Humanity’s destiny and asks what it is to be human. Each episode focuses on a different aspect of the human species and the universe we live in, from the way we evolved from apes to what the future on this planet holds for humans.
Human Universe is hosted by a very well known Presenter, Professor and Scientist -Brian Cox. By having Brian Cox as a presenter on a Television series in which the topic focused on is something he specialises in, will not only attract his fans to watch, it will also help people who have an interest in science, nature and the universe to engage in it as you can see when watching this program how passionate Brian is about this topic. As well as this, Brian Cox has had previous experience of presenting science based TV programmes and people that watched even just one of those and liked his presenting style may watch Human Universe also. Producers would have taken all of these facts into account when picking Brian Cox to be the presenter.
Research is a vital part of finding an audience for a specific program and a lot of things have to be taken into consideration. One of the main ways in which media producers tend to identify a target audience is to identify Doreen. Doreen is an imaginary person who media producers believe to be their typical listener, viewer or receiver. Sometimes, the previous popularity of a television program with the same presenter they would like to feature on their program can be important information to know. They would find this information in many ways – one of which would be looking on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. By looking on social network sites, you can see a lot of information such as how many people are talking about the program or the presenter, how many people are following them, the location where most viewers of the program live and the age range of the viewers. For example, by researching into Human Universe, I was able to find out that the average age range of viewers that watch Brian Cox is between 25-34 years old. The location of the most engaged insights is London. From this information, we can assume that many of his viewers are British and may have families. Whilst studying the profiles of the people who have either liked Brian Cox on Facebook or followed him on Twitter, I was unable to identify a specific religion in which most of his fans follow. Due to this, I believe that you cannot fully determine a religion in which most people who watch Human Universe follow. However, ass Human Universe is a programme which focuses on science i feel that many people who would watch this programme could be Atheists.
Studying more into Brian Cox as an individual, I firstly studied his twitter page (@profbriancox) to research into his follower count. After I had found this, I went onto a website called twtrland where I was able to find the ratio between male and female twitter followers that he has and I found that over 50% of his followers are Male. I was also able to find other analytics such as the fact that 70% of his followers live in the UK, 38% of these in London. These analytics are shown below.
After I had found both the average age and location of Professor Brian Cox’s viewers and fans, I went on to find out more about the social class of his viewers. By using the Great British Class Calculator on the BBC’s website, I was able to research into different social class groups and find out which ones I believed Brian Cox’s viewers fell into. Firstly, I studied the New Affluent Workers, as I believed this to be a contender. The New Affluent Social Class states that the average age of people in this class is 44, slightly outside of the average age range I found on Facebook. This calculator also states that people in this social class have high scores for emerging culture, therefore using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. I feel that this social class could be where Brian Cox’s Facebook and Twitter fans may lie.
The next social class I researched was the Elite class. This is the class which holds the UK’s Biggest earners who have the highest scores for social, cultural & economic factors. The average age of people in this social class is 57, getting further away from the average age range stated on Facebook, however this class states that these people are more than likely going to be living in London and the home counties which coincides with the statistic of the location of most of Brian Cox’s fans.
Finally, I looked into the technical middle class. In this class, the average age range is 52 years old. They also prefer emerging culture to highbrow culture. Therefore they like using social media instead of listening to classical music. This could be the age range in which some of Brain Cox’s fans lie. The one point in this social class that I wanted to focus on was the fact that many people in this group work in either research, science and technical occupations and as Brian Cox is a professor in science, many of his fans might also be scientists themselves, falling into this social class.
Overall, finding Doreen for Human Universe has proved to be quite difficult due to the fact that this programme can appeal to so many different age groups, social classes and religious beliefs. After careful consideration, I have come to my conclusion that Doreen is a 34 year old male who lives in a small suburb outside of London with a small family. He lies in the new affluent workers social class group and has no religious belief.
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