How the Audience is Made?

Curran: What is the central dilemma of the television audience as both consumer and product

The audience both watches programmes and is the product sold to advertisers so editors and schedulers treat content mainly as a tool to assemble desirable viewers which pushes them to favour safe mass appeal shows and times that maximize ratings rather than purely editorial or cultural aims

Curran: How does advertising expenditure act as a continuous limiting force on commercial television programming

Advertising budgets determine which audiences are worth chasing so channels structure schedules to deliver large predictable groups such as women and youth and they avoid risky minority material since losing ratings means losing revenue so advertising money constantly narrows the range of acceptable content regardless of who owns the stations

Curran: How has technological change encouraged concentration of media ownership and who are the main victims of this oligopoly

Because new technology made broadcasting expensive and capital intensive only large corporations could compete and over time they merged into profit seeking conglomerates that dominate many media and the main victims of this concentration are variety creativity and quality

Curran: How did commercial criteria introduced by independent television alter the type of executives who controlled broadcasting

Public service broadcasting valued cultural enrichment balanced schedules and national education so it was run by administrators with civil service style careers whereas independent television was judged by profit ratings and advertiser satisfaction so control shifted to entrepreneurial show business and corporate figures who chased commercial success

Curran: What is the difference between spot advertising and programme sponsorship and why was spot advertising seen as a victory for the public service principle

Programme sponsorship means an advertiser pays for and often influences a whole show while spot advertising sells brief slots before after or during programmes without nominal say over content and its adoption in Britain was seen as a public service victory because advertisers bought time not programmes so editors were meant to retain final control over what was broadcast :contentReference[oaicite:4]{index=4}

Curran: Why is it misleading to claim that spot advertising protects television content in the same way that newspaper advertising leaves editorials independent

The analogy is flawed because in commercial television advertisers may not script programmes yet their need for certain audiences and favourable contexts makes companies choose genres topics and times that suit campaigns so the editorial principle is constrained by market calculations in a way that goes far beyond normal newspaper dependence on advertising

Curran: What does packaging or segmenting the audience for advertisers involve and how are regional characteristics used in this process

Packaging the audience means using research to define viewers as saleable groups such as housewives youth or specific classes in specific regions then offering these bundles to advertisers for example sales campaigns portrayed Westward Television as a region where many women cook and Southern as rich in ABC1 housewives who both buy food and have leisure so that brands could target them

Curran: How has the regional structure of commercial television reshaped marketing in Britain and at the same time inhibited discussion of local political issues

Regional commercial stations were drawn to create areas with enough purchasing power to interest advertisers rather than to reflect real communities so they became tools for launching and testing products and for applying extra advertising pressure while their odd boundaries and marketing focus meant they rarely mirrored local government areas which discouraged sustained coverage of local political debates

Curran: Why does Jones drawing on Wolf argue that ownership alone does not explain programming differences and that market pressures are more decisive

Producers can exercise creativity inside companies yet Jones drawing on Wolf notes that stations with different owners tend to make similar programming choices because all chase audiences for profit and smaller diversely owned outlets often replace serious network news or documentaries with cheap popular material so variations reflect vulnerability to ratings and advertising pressures more than the personal preferences of proprietors :contentReference[oaicite:8]{index=8}

Curran: How does the drive for cheaper output under media concentration almost inevitably lead to declining journalistic and production standards

As conglomerates competed they sought to cut costs which favoured inexpensive formats and purchased material so it became cheaper to rely on agency news rather than send reporters and to buy standardized foreign soap operas rather than fund original drama and this drive for economy almost inevitably reduced journalistic depth and production quality and narrowed the range of programmes