Audience Consumnption

Sam Ashdown 13F
1. How do audiences consume music channels?
There are forms of consumption when considering how audiences watch music channels. The first is ‘Focused viewing’; this involves viewer to have a deeper relationship with the channel or music and have more attentive viewing. For example, a person that enjoys the ’Indy’ genre of music will watch Karrang!, because it plays that form of music and the viewer can make a personal relationship with, the music they get pleasure from. Also you will find that often the advertisements on the genre channels with be in context with channel.
The second form is ‘Ambient viewing’; this involves the viewer making a far less attentive response to the music channel. Often this case of consumption is in communal situations and as an audio background.

2. Why are they commercially viable with such small audience shares?
The reason why theses genre channels have become commercially viable is because they are often many of them are owned by large media conglomerates. For example, having used www.barb.co.uk, channels such as The HITS only has around 0.4 percentage share and Karrang! only having around 0-1 percentage share of viewing. But both channels are owned by Emap, the media conglomerate, who can claim that, after adding all their channels together will have on average 24,000 people watching Emap any one time. This figure attracts many companies that wish to advertise on any one of their channels. Companies such as Creative Zen, who went to Emap with limited funds and asked them to advertise their product. Emap’s award winning advertising campaign meant that the Creative Zen sold out within weeks.