Audience profile, Focus group

Audience research and planning (GROUP)

Through the research of E4, we have concluded that our programme would be targeted mainly towards the audience that are between the ages of 16-34. This demographic are very sociable, connected and are heavy internet users and so creating a media product that is advertised appropriately online as well as tv would allow for a successful rate of people tuning in. But we have seen that relying on demographics have weaknesses as there is nothing said about interests or lifestyle. So we have also used psychographics. Our target audience that we have agreed on are the aspirers as they are the most interested on image and are oriented to extrinsic and are commonly the ones that are young. Another psychographic group that we have included are explorers. These people are the ones that are up for trying new things and are up for an adventure and are generally younger.

What we have learned from our focus group is that our idea sounds appealing and is that it is something that people between the ages of 16 and 34 would watch. As the protagonist of our plot is searching and trying to rescue his brother he is on the good side of audience as he is seen as the hero and also seen as someone loyal which further appeals to the audience. People also like our idea because as our hero is a black youth, it contradicts the stereotypes of black youths being corrupt and being the cause of all crime, because in our plot he is fighting for the force of good. Also as our idea is a linear narrative, our focus group said that people would stay tuned in as the plot progresses forward to a resolution and so people would want to find out whether the problem is resolved in the end. However, a flaw in our plot is that was brought up by the focus group is that our plot doesn’t involve any females. Our rebuttal to this is that maybe later on in the season, a woman could come in and act as a femme fetal which also empowers the female audience. However, we believe that our initial idea is appealing to both males and females because the reason of the protagonist going out to defeat the thugs is because of his compassion for his brother. We believe that the fact that his motivation is to protect his family will appeal to both genders because family is something that everyone appeals to. Also, as there is clearly one main protagonist, considering Blumler and Katz’s theory of uses and gratifications, our product will be used for personal relationship. This is because we assume that audiences will identify with the main protagonist. As our location is set in West London, and West London is generally regarded as safe so our plot is an alternative representation of West London as in our idea it is represented as dangerous. Our focus group said that this is an interesting thing to do as our idea brings out the grittier and more daring side of West London. The feedback from our focus group is that our cast may need re-thinking. This is because they claim that our villain wasn’t daunting and intimidating enough to seem realistic. We have considered this idea but we chose to stick with our cast because we have already distributed roles and decided on who’s doing what during our filming sessions and the arrangements we have come up with is the most efficient in our group.