How do Media Professionals "Know" Their Audience?

There are many tactics that media professionals may use in order to know and understand their target audience. Some of these are simpler, involving ratings and sales figures. These are simple numbers that tell what the audience is viewing, listening to, or buying and what it isn't. Direct response methods, such as email or interactive television may also be utilized in order to garner a response from audiences based on the media that is represented by certain media professionals. But there is another method which these professionals get to know their audiences: research.

Production research is a vastly important component to media creation, selling, and buying, yet it is rather overlooked because most of it happens behind the scenes. Production research not only studies the audience but also the production and preparatory means taken by media professionals so that they can see how others are accomplishing media-related tasks. It stresses not only text and tangible product, but also the context in which the product is being released in. This takes into account demographic, geography, trends, fads, and other factors that may affect how media is perceived when it is released. Two strands of production research are used: the first concentrates on the constraints of media professionals and the second analyzes certain concerns as well as other media text. The constraints may included political and economic forces as well as the constraints of an imposing or over-ruling ideology that is present in society, often supporting a certain class or social group.

Various research methods are also employed in order to analyze audiences for research. Typically, methods such as interviews, case studies, archival research, and detailed analyses of public and private documents are used to garner further information and "know" the audiences of the media. The balance between researching and understanding media audiences as well as the creators of that media (especially in production) is very important and can allow media professionals to create better media that is more successful for them as a company as well as more sucessful with the audiences that they are attempting to cater to.