welcome


 * __Half Term 1 - Welcome To Media Studies (__**History of the Media and Key Concepts)


 * __HOT LINKS:__**

http://www.bbc.co.uk/heritage/story/index.shtml - The history of the BBC


 * __History of The Media:__**




 * __Radio__**

- Lesson 1

- Lesson 2


 * __Key Concepts:__**

Listed below are some key concepts that you will need to grasp to be successful at Media Studies.


 * __Audience__**

'Audience' is a very important concept throughout media studies. All media texts are made with an audience in mind, ie a group of people who will receive it and make some sort of sense out of it. And generally, but not always, the producers make some money out of that audience. Therefore it is important to understand what happens when an audience "meets" a media text.


 * __Constructing Audience__**

When a media text is being planned, perhaps the most important question the producers consider is "Does it have an audience?" If the answer to this is 'no', then there is no point in going any further. Audience research is a major part of any media company, using questionnaires, focus groups, and comparisons to existing media texts, they will spend a great deal of time and money ascertaining if there is anyone out there who might be interested in their idea. It's a serious business; media producers basically want to know the of their potential audience, a method of categorising known as **demographics**. Once they know this they can begin to shape their text to appeal to a group with known reading/viewing/listening habits. One common way of describing audiences is to use a letter code to show their income bracket:
 * income bracket/status
 * age
 * gender
 * race
 * location


 * A || Top management, bankers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals  ||
 * B || Middle management, teachers, many 'creatives' eg graphic designers etc  ||
 * C1 || Office supervisors, junior managers, nurses, specialist clerical staff etc  ||
 * C2 || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Skilled workers, tradespersons (white collar)  ||
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">D || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers (blue collar)  ||
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">E || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Unemployed, students, pensioners, casual workers  ||

<span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">They also consider very carefully how that audience might react to, or engage with, their text. The following are all factors in analysing or predicting this reaction.


 * **<span style="color: #000033; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This describes how an audience interacts with a media text. Different people react in different ways to the same text. ||
 * **<span style="color: #000033; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">These are the advance ideas an audience may have about a text. This particularly applies to genre pieces. Don't forget that producers often play with or deliberately shatter audience expectations. ||
 * **<span style="color: #000033; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">AUDIENCE FOREKNOWLEDGE ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This is the definite information (rather than the vague expectations) which an audience brings to a media product. ||
 * **<span style="color: #000033; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This is the way in which audiences feel themselves connected to a particular media text, in that they feel it directly expresses their attitude or lifestyle. ||
 * **<span style="color: #000033; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">AUDIENCE PLACEMENT ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This is the range of strategies media producers use to directly target a particular audience and make them feel that the media text is specially 'for them'. ||
 * **<span style="color: #000033; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">AUDIENCE RESEARCH ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Measuring an audience is very important to all media institutions. Research is done at all stages of production of a media text, and, once produced, audience will be continually monitored. ||

<span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Audience reaction to even early versions of a media text is closely watched. Hollywood studios routinely show a pre-release version of every movie they make to a test audience, and will often make changes to the movie that are requested by that audience. Read about test screenings [|here].

<span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
 * __Creating Audience__**

Once a media text has been made, its producers need to ensure that it reaches the audience it is intended for. All media texts will have some sort of marketing campaign attached to them. Elements of this might include <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Marketing campaigns are intended to create awareness of a media text. Once that awareness has been created, hopefully audiences will come flocking in their hundreds of millions.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">posters
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">print advertisements
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">trailers
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">promotional interviews (eg stars appearing on chat shows)
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">tie-in campaigns (eg a blockbuster movie using McDonalds meals)
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">merchandising (t-shirts, baseball caps, key rings)


 * __Counting Audience__**

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Different types of media texts measure their audiences in different ways.

<span style="color: #000066; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Also be aware that film companies are very coy about publishing production costs of a movie, and that they rarely include the cost of a film's marketing budget, which is probably at least a third again of the production costs, and is frequently more. in some cases, the marketing budget may exceed the cost of originally making the film - //Four Weddings & a Funeral//'s American marketing spend is an example of this. <span style="color: #000066; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You can find details of the **box office** of more recent movies at [|IMDb]. ||
 * **<span style="color: #000066; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Film ** || <span style="color: #000066; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Figures are based on box office receipts, rather than the number of people who have actually seen the movie. Subtract the production costs of a movie from the box office receipts to find out how much money it made, and therefore how successful it has been in the profit-driven movie business. Be aware that a film which does not cost much to make (eg //The Blair Witch Project//) and takes even a modest amount at the box office can be considered a greater success than a big action movie which cost more, has a bigger set of box office receipts (ie lots more people went to see it) but has a smaller profit margin.
 * **<span style="color: #000066; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Print ** || <span style="color: #000066; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Magazines and newspapers measure their **circulation** (ie numbers of copies sold). They are open about these figures - they have to be as these are the numbers quoted to advertisers when negotiating the price of a page. ||
 * **<span style="color: #000066; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Radio/TV ** || <span style="color: #000066; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Measuring the number of viewers and listeners for a TV/Radio programme or whole station's output is a complex business. Generally, an audience research agency (eg BARB) will select a sample of the population and monitor their viewing and listening habits over the space of 7 days. The data gained is then extrapolated to cover the whole population, based on the percentage sample. It is by no means an accurate science and you can find about some of the techniques used [|here] . The numbers obtained are known as the **viewing figures** or **ratings**. ||

Revise your knowledge of the concept of **Audience** and complete the **Directed Study Task** to apply your knowledge of 'audience' to the idea of promoting films using posters. You can put your notes, your chosen poster and your analysis into your Media Portfolio:

Use Rubican and Young's guide to Audience Types. You can print this off and put it in the 'Audience' section of your Media Portfoilo:


 * __Semiology__**

Below is a task to develop your understanding how meaning is created with **Semiology:**

<span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
 * __Genre__**
 * Working definition: ** way of categorising a particular media text according to its content and style.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Genre does not rely simply on what's //in// a media text but on the way it is put together (important when distinguishing eg between a horror movie and a thriller, which often deal with the same subject matter but belong to clearly separate genres). A media text is said to belong to a genre, in that it adopts the codes and conventions of other texts in that genre, and behaves in roughly the same way. Text from different mediums may belong to the same genre (eg some tv programmes & graphic novels can all be classified as science fiction). <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**// How do you tell which genre something belongs to? //** <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Content** <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Eg Westerns always have cowboys You have a set of expectations as to what a genre text will contain in terms of transportation, costume, character, setting, mise en scene, soundtrack, stars etc. <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Style** <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Eg women's magazines present an attractive model on the front cover who may have very little to do with the contents of the magazine Media texts follow sets of conventions in the way that they are constructed. You have contents pages in a magazine immediately inside the front cover. A romantic comedy always ends with a wedding. Often content and style are closely interlinked. <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**// Does belonging to a genre mean that a text has to be exactly the same as other texts within that genre? //**

<span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">No — genres are described as dynamic, ie their boundaries are constantly changing. Individual texts can challenge conventions, and defy certain parts of the genre categorisation — for instance //Scream// brought a lot of parody and humour into horror films of the late 1990s. Genre texts would get very boring and predictable if they all followed exactly the same conventions — no audiences would want to consume them, they'd just keep revisiting the old ones. <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> //**<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Producers of media texts? **// <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**//Distributors?//**
 * // Why is genre important for ... //**
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Gives a pattern for construction, a template
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Genre pieces have an established audience
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Certain personnel can develop their skills working within a particular genre
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Stars can associate themselves with a particular genre
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Fans of a genre know the codes, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel all the time
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Clear channels for marketing and distribution — easily targetable audience
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Concentration of distribution resources — no point in trying to get eg football matches to a non-sports audience
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Fans of a genre as a whole can easily be persuaded to buy other texts in the same genre eg dance music compilation cds
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Provides a structure for retail outlets (HMV!)


 * Working out the 'genre' is a way of categorising a particular media text according to it's content and style. Download some notes for your Portfolio here:**


 * Powerpoint on Genre, Representation and Semiology:**