Ratings / Audience Figures

Why are ratings / audience figures so impotant?
Companies spend a lot of time and monie researching audience figures and ratings for different media products, they are of vital importance to the industry as a whole. Finding out a audience figures is vital when trying to figure out where to place a certain television show in a schedule. If a station can prove it is pulling in massive audiences it can sell its air time to advertisers for a much higher price If a programmes ratings drop, it shows that the popularity of the show is dropping, this means the company will have to re think weather it is worth investing monie to continue producing the show and either cancell the show.

If you are a leading actor in a hit drama or programme, you can ask for more pay over the course of the series as the station is getting larger audiences which means more advertisers will want to place their products inbetween their programmes, which means more monie all together!

Focus Group
I took part in a short focus group with a few people from my class. We found that in larger groups there are one or two people who dominate the group, contributing the most and being much more involved, and one or two people who keep quite quiet. This method of research, is very good because it allows you to directly addres your clients and find out exactly what they are thinking, being able to choose certain demographics in a group is also vital. However i found that with larger groups, some participants started to change their opinion once others in the group had spoken, this can be a slight disadvantage as you are not always getting that persons original opinion.