Sources of Media Research: National Television Study, ADMAR Satellite Cable Network Study, Reach and Coverage Study, CIB Listenership Survey
by National Television Study
Television studies is an academic discipline that deals with critical approaches to television. Usually, it is distinguished from mass communication research, which tends to approach the topic from a social sciences perspective. Defining the field is problematic; some institutions and syllabuses do not distinguish it from media studies or classify it as a subfield of popular culture studies.
One form of television studies is roughly equivalent to the longer-standing discipline of film studies in that it is often concerned with textual analysis yet other approaches center more on the social functions of television. For example, analyses of quality television, such as Cathy Come Home and Twin Peaks, have attracted the interests of researchers for their cinematic qualities. However, television studies can also incorporate the study of television viewing and how audiences make meaning from texts, which is commonly known as audience theory or reception theory.
As a result, television studies is marked by a great deal of “disciplinary hybridity.” Perhaps because television scholars are approaching the subject from so many different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, there are many debates about how television should be understood and conceptualized from a political and methodological point of view. Another impact of the disciplinary hybridity is the diversity in the types of studies carried out. Early television studies included histories of television, biographies of television producers, archival research by historians, and sociological studies of the role the television set played in 1950s homes.
In television studies, television and other mass media forms are “Conceptualised within frameworks” such as “Ownership; national and international regulation of media production and distribution; professional ideologies; public opinion; [and] media audiences.” As the field of television studies was being developed, it was influenced by the medium’s longstanding issue of invoking “distrust, fear and contempt”, as a purported cause of social ills. As well, television scholars had to prove that television was different from other “mass media”, often by pointing to how television differed from radio and cinema.
In the 1970s and 1980s, television studies developed three strands of commentary:
- A journalistic approach, which reviews recent television programs
- A literary and dramatic criticism approach, which examines the television screenwriter in the same way that literary and dramatic criticism examines novels and plays
- A social science approach, which examines production and distribution, and the function of television in society.
The social science stream examined the social function and effects of television and analyzed the role that television plays in the social order and the public sphere. Some television scholars applied Marxist frameworks or the “critical sociology of the Frankfurt School”. Since the 1970s, feminist television scholars have focused “… on programmes for women and those which have key female protagonists”, such as Julie D’Acci’s study of the police drama Cagney and Lacey and the “Now substantial literature on soap opera.” Television studies in the 1990s includes “work on the definition and interpretation of the television text and the new media ethnographies of viewing” and histories of “production studies” how television shows are developed, financed, and produced.
While some predicted the end of television (or at least of the broadcast TV), some scholars claim that television “has never been so healthy and triumphant as nowadays”.
ADMAR Satellite Cable Network Study
Reach and Coverage Study
In the application of statistics to advertising and media analysis, reach refers to the total number of different people or households exposed, at least once, to a medium during a given period. Reach should not be confused with the number of people who will actually be exposed to and consume the advertising, though. It is just the number of people who are exposed to the medium and therefore have an opportunity to see or hear the ad or commercial. Reach may be stated either as an absolute number, or as a fraction of a given population (for instance ‘TV households’, ‘men’ or ‘those aged 25–35’).
Advertising coverage is defined as the expected number of customers or prospects of a product or brand who will be reached by an advertisement. This advertising coverage number will be largely decided by choice of media i.e. TVC, print advertising, online media and the frequency of advertisement in the selected media. Advertising coverage percentage varies across different media chosen and the target percentage depends upon the scope of the company, the targets of the company, the project undertaken and the particulars of the marketing intentions.
To determine Advertising Coverage, there are various ways. Sometimes, the Advertiser himself identifies this percentage for the company. Or, it can also be determined by establishing a point of diminishing returns. This is the point where the costs of the Advertisement exceed the expected returns from the audience. This is where certain changes need to be done. The change may be the Advertisement itself, the channel used, the frequency of the Advertisement, the graphics and the content used for the Advertisement, etc. The proper planning involves setting the right targets regarding the coverage and frequency in order to avoid wasting money in the wrong message, wrong channel or the wrong time. Advertising coverage plays an important role in deciding how and where to display advertisements. Advertisers sometimes want as many prospective customers as possible to view their advertisements. Thus overall customer reach is an important factor deciding advertising coverage. Advertisers also market the product to specific segment of people in some cases and thus they have to place their advertisements so that target audience should see them. Thus, reach of an advertisement to customer according to their needs is also important factor of expected coverage.
Types of Media in Advertising Coverage
The type of media chosen for advertisement plays an important role in extending advertising coverage. For example billboard advertisement have limited coverage within the area where it is planted. Television advertisements have large advertising coverage as they are seen by large audiences. Also, the interstitials on internet sites are usually targeted to specific individual and thus gives significant Advertising coverage. Another example of increasing advertising coverage through internet is through Viral Marketing. Viral advertising is method in which social networking services are leveraged to produce increased brand awareness by making an advertising campaign viral. Thus people share the advertisements on their social networking account thus increasing the advertising coverage. Thus choice of media and the frequency of advertisement determines the viewership of advertisement and thus advertising coverage.
Advantages of Advertising Coverage
- Advertisements have primarily been the main source of attracting customers towards a product or brand and having proper advertising coverage helps attract many customers towards its product or services.
- There is a wide variety of different Advertisement channels available each serving a specific set of purposes and tapping a particular customer segment and can be chosen based on the purpose and the budget of the company.
Disadvantages of Advertising Coverage
- Some channels involve really high investment costs which may or may not give the expected coverage or return and the company may end up making huge losses.
- To have an effective Advertisement coverage, a lot of factors need to be taken into consideration and coordinated together like the timing, the place, length, graphics, content, etc. which may the entire procedure complex. Not having even one thing right may ruin the entire purpose.
- Also, a proper frequency of Advertisements to show must be chosen in order to avoid saturation with too much display of the Advertisements.
CIB Listenership Survey