audience

An audience is an individual or collective group of people who read or consume any media text. Examples of this are: Radio listeners, Television viewers, Web traffic on websites.

Audiences are important because without an audience there would be no media. Media organisations produce media texts to make profit. Therefore no audience means no profit. The mass media is becoming more and more competitive every year. 

The impact of new technology on audiences means that old media like print and radio, no longer have high audience members. Audiences are now becoming fragmented. Fragmented audience is the devision of audiences into similar groups due to the variety of media outlets.

There are two types of audiences in the media industry; mass audience and nice audience. Mass audience also known as 'broadcast audience' are those who consume mainstream or popular texts. Examples of these are soaps and sitcoms. Mass audience is media and communication that appeals to a large group of people. Niche audience's are much smaller but very influential. They are small and select groups of people with unique interest. Examples of these are specialised magazines or TV shows.

The two main systems to categorising audiences are psychographics and demographics.