Page 157 - Living Room WarsDesprately Seeking the Audience Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World

Notes 145
7
Streamlining ‘television audience’
1 This assumption is reflected in the often heard ideological assertion that ratings are for
broadcasting what elections are for politics: a form of mass democracy based on a one-man,
one-vote system. The problem with this assertion is its implicit assumption that viewers are
free to make their choices on an individual basis. Qualitative, ethnographic research however
has indicated that since television is often not watched individually but in family contexts,
not all viewers get equal opportunity to watch what they want. In this respect, ‘one-man,
one-vote’ should be taken literally: it is often the father in the family who possesses the
power to determine what the entire family should watch. See Lull (1982); Morley (1986).
2 This procedure is not unique to audience measurement, but is common to quantitative social
research, which leans heavily on the presupposition that people can be aggregated and
divided up in distinct categories, the members of which can be defined in terms of isolatable,
measurable attributes. For an excellent discussion of this set of assumptions, see Anderson
(1987). See also Taylor (1979).
3 Of course, television producers are generally acutely aware of the fact that they cannot control
audience responses to their programmes, although they attempt to anticipate to the
heterogeneity of the broadcast audience by constructing polysemic texts, that is, programmes
that can be interpreted and enjoyed in multiple ways. See, for an elaboration of this
argument, Fiske (1987).
4 Psychographic segmentation does not necessarily have to coincide with demographic
segmentation. The VALS (Values and Lifestyle Program) system, for example, divides the
American population into nine groups based upon a measurement of their values and
lifestyles, not upon fixed demographic variables. The existence of competing segmentation
procedures only clarifies the ‘fictional’ nature of constructing a streamlined representation of
the audience. It should also be noted that the drive towards segmentation is generally
propelled by a wish to determine audience ‘quality’, defined as ‘attractive and relevant to
advertising targets’. However, advertising agencies are often highly sceptical about
psychographics, because they often find the data to be too rigid, too simplistic, and too
unreliable to be useful as tools for predicting advertising effectiveness. See Beville (1985),
Chapter 5. See also Plummer (1972); Wells (1974).
5 It may be illuminating here to evoke the common use of the word ‘streamlining’ in industrial
design. Most elementarily, a streamlined design refers to the smooth cigar shapes primarily
associated with aviation technology, a profile for aircraft which presumably serves certain
functions such as facilitating speed and maximizing air flow. In a more general sense
streamlining denotes smooth, curvilinear form and style—an aesthetic that dominated
American industrial design from 1930 to the late 1950s, and that connotes eclectic
superficiality (streamlined products accentuated the decorative) and ease of consumption.
See Hebdige (1988).
6 Of course, the networks also try to ‘predict the unpredictable’ (Gitlin 1983) through the pre-
testing of programmes and programme concepts. However, despite these research efforts the
number of programmes that fail (in terms of ratings success) is enormous. For example, in
1986 only 43 per cent of NBC programme series that were launched a year before remained
on the screen because their ratings performance was acceptable. There were years when this
figure was even lower. See Stipp (1987) for an overview of programme research in
American network television.
7 In more theoretical terms, this means that viewers’ identities are to be conceived as temporary
‘interdiscursive’ constructs, the site of a multiplicity of often contradictory subject positions.
See Morley (1980b).