Task 1 - Understand how media producers define audiences for their products

Task 1 - Understand how media producers define audiences for their products

Quantitative

Quantitative data is data that has a numerical answer. A question that is answered with a number like 'What would you rate the game out of 10?' would be considered a quantitative question or any answer that can't be put into a chart. An example of this would be in the form of ratings like if a game has been rated 8/10 then this is Quantitative data. The upside to this would be that it is easier to record the data and it would be easier to put into categories whereas, on the other hand, you can't compare two games fully with just a rating. If a game has been reviewed and rated by IGN or another source and the majority of reviews are good then a lot of the time this can dictate whether the game has a sequel or even goes on to have multiple follow up games.









An example of this is Titanfall, after its release in 2014, Metacritic gave it a rating of 86 out of 100, this then gave EA a reason to bring out Titanfall 2 which was then given a better rating of 87. (these ratings were for the XBOX ONE version of the game. EA as a company could then heavily invest into Titanfall 2 by adding DLC or creating a follow up game because it was a critical success.

Qualitative

Qualitative data includes open-ended questions, questions that desire a reasoning behind the answer is qualitative data. Qualitative research is exploratory research is used to try and get a better insight to how fans view a game deeper than what a rating would be. A question like 'What did you lie about the game?' would be a qualitative question. An example of this would be a person leaving a review on a game using whats good and whats bad about the game. The good side to this is that you can get a full rating of the game and the bad side would be the data is harder to record on a chart. Qualitative data is used by every gamer and critic when deciding on whats good and bad about the game, this (again) has a major factor in whether a game has any more games that follow it.

Above is a couple reviews for the newest game of DOOM released in 2016 and they are two fan reviews on how the game is. The review on the left is heavily praising the game and is helpful to other fans on whether to buy the game. Again the review on the right says how good the game is and once again is a heavy influence on whether other people buy the game.

BARB

Standing for the Broadcasters Audience Research Board, BARB have the job of receiving information and compiling the measurements taken into television ratings across the UK. They were developed in 1981 and since then have formed partnerships with BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertisements after taking over the two older systems which were formed by ITV ratings done by JICTAR and the BBC who did their own audience research. They track the viewers statistics by placing a box on the TV sets which monitors what is being watched. The new results for what is watched each week are published every morning from the day before.




BARB currently have boxes functioning in around 5,100 homes spread across the /united Kingdom, this equals to around about 12,000 individuals who represent the UK's viewing habits. These stats become very important to the television network included as it highlights what the most popular shows are and at what times they are most popular at, for example a show that is playing at around 1 o'clock during the weekday will be a lot less popular that a show that is playing on the same day but in the evening because the majority of viewers will be in work or busy in the day, hence why the most popular shows such as X Factor and I'm a Celebrity and played during the evening. This also allows them to choose the right content that they should show. For a show like the X Factor or Britain's Got Talent they are very unlikely to have a sponsor which is inappropriate for a family with kids.

There are currently three companies that assist BARB with their research. The first is RSMB who create surveys, quality control and calculation methodology. They give the required resources for the second company, Ipsos MORI, who have the task of carrying out surveys for the data which is then used for the viewing habits for the families taking part. They are also partially part in the choice of which families who are involved in the program. The final company involved is, Kantar Edia, they take care of the installed boxes needed to view what is being watched and processing of audience reports.

RAJAR

Created by both the BBC and and RadioCentre in 1992, RAJAR stands for Radio Joint Research and they are the official operating body in control of calculating radio audiences across the United Kingdom. The measure on average how long audiences will listen for, where they are listening and the most popular times that the radio is being listened to. RAJAR is very similar to BARB in that they will take in all the data that is valuable such as the most popular times people are listening and it allows the radio to mold what is playing in accordance to what the audience is.

RAJAR publish their reports every quarter in the year/ every three months. which is compiled from an audience of over 100,000 people who are aged from 15 upwards. Unlike BARB, RAJAR does not use any other hardware meter to measure audiences

OFCOM

Based n London, The Office of Communications is a government approved regulatory body used for telecommunications, radio broadcasting and the postal service around the UK. OFCOM also have the opportunity to regulate landline calls. They are tasked with controlling what is shown on TV's, making sure that it is acceptable to be viewed by the general public. They have the ability to do this though the Communications Act 2003. OFCOM will frequently receive complaints from viewers and radio broadcasts that they do not believe as acceptable.

Most recently OFCOM have been sent nearly 400 complaints because of huge soap TV show Coronation street's attempt at a double murder scene. Because of the amount of people that have complained they have the ability to never have this episode shown on television  again. Furthermore, the chairman has said that he wishes OFCOM to have a stake in the regulatory systems with Facebook and Google.

Data Collection

There are three major ways to collect data from individuals: Focus Groups, Questionnaires and Face- to-Face interviews. In this next section in will talk about each of them along with their advantages and disadvantages.

Focus Groups

The first of these ways is focus groups, this is a very good way of getting a lot of data in one point. In this, they will take in a group of people which are specifically picked by the company involved. The company will ask the group to answer a survey surrounding the topic they are covering. This style of research is a qualitative style, the focus is to gather a lot of different opinions on the one subjects. Focus groups, if used correctly, can be very important to a company who are trying to improve what their company is doing, this is because they can see a much wider variety of opinions and it is still cheap . 

On the other hand focus groups have the potential to be dangerous when they aren't done properly. There are a few examples as to why they may not be the best method to choose:

• The sample sizes that are being used aren't the biggest, they used a group between 8-10 and so they are only hearing a very small sample considering the thousands/millions that will be using the final product and so they are not always reliable.
• Also, there could be a group bias situation and because of such not everyone is able to get out their own opinions and so to guess that the groups decision is correct is very risky
• To run a successful focus group you would have to do a lot of travelling because you need a well rounded vision from different groups. This can be very difficult under a budget. 

Questionnaire

This may be the easiest form of collecting data that a company can do. The will hand a customer or any other participant a list of questions to answer. These questions are most likely to be for everyone to take part in and can sometimes be delivered by the post for the home owners to fill in and send back. The most popular way for a large scale company to send out these surveys is to have another, smaller company to produce them and distribute them. Questionnaires are very popular for when you dont have any direct audience,for example, a retail store will have customers to answer questions on how to improve their quality. An advantage of this is they are often very cheap to produce yourself if you don't outsource, you will often recieve thousands of answers and from that can improve or create a product that the audience want.

There are a few disadvantages however, as mentioned before they can be sent out in the post or in some cases they can be given out in the streets, this could mean that the data would give a specific demographic to their customers. This means that if a company like Boots who mainly has a female demographic can't have a valid response from women. Furthermore, there is no way for the company to tell how truthful the participant is being with their answers, they could lie on anything, from their age or how well the company is performing.

Face-to-Face Interviews 

This technique is when an interviewer will sit down with one person ask them questions regarding the subject. They are somewhat similar to phone call interviews only the participant involved is more likely to answer truthfully. These can be much more practical as they can arrange with the contributor where the interview will take place. 

The advantages behind this method are you can have much more detailed questions which are followed by more in depth answers because they aren't having to write a huge answer in a tiny box like if it was a questionnaire. Also the company have the option to add visual stimuli into the interview.

The disadvantages to this are that this method will usually take a lot longer to undergo because of the amount of man hour required. Also, the company will find it very hard to tackle every possible geographical location. When conducting a face-to-face interview, you can sometimes run into a few participants that will be worried about their anonymity or will be in someway affected by interviewer bias.

Audience Profiling 

Audience profiling is a tool that is used before a company creates a new product that is put onto the market, products like films and magazines are examples. Before the project has begun, there must be some things talked about for the demographic, things like age, gender, race, etc. are all very important factor. When it comes to watching the television or listening to the radio factors like the  education or occupation of the viewer/listener have major impacts on what is being shown or played. The end goal is to know your consumers better than if you were to guess who they were.

In the situation for television broadcaster it gives them an opportunity to change the advertisements to attract a better demographic, for example during day time tv the most popular people watching are people on benefits and so adverts like bingo are shown to try and entice them into joining 'Gala Bingo' Furthermore, you may notice that on a weekend, usually in the morning there will be a lot of cartoons on such as 'Batman: The Animated Series' and 'Spider-Man: The Animated Series' and so they will also show adverts for children's toys. This is to increase the chance of the toys being bought or ordered by viewers and then the company putting more trust and wanting their adverts being shown more often earning the broadcasting channel more money. 

Sources:
http://uk.ign.com/games/reviews
http://www.metacritic.com/search/all/titanfall%20/results
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/doom
http://www.barb.co.uk/viewing-data/monthly-top-10/
http://www.rajar.co.uk/
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/4799594/coronation-streets-shock-double-murder-scenes-is-being-assessed-by-ofcom-after-390-people-complain-about-dark-storyline/
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/oct/10/ofcom-patricia-hodgson-google-facebook-fake-news
http://researchaccess.com/2014/05/endanged-focus-groups/
http://libweb.surrey.ac.uk/library/skills/Introduction%20to%20Research%20and%20Managing%20Information%20Leicester/page_51.htm
https://www.slideshare.net/leannacatherina/audience-profiling-powerpoint