Types of Audience: Niche & Mainstream

Types Of Audiences

Niche: Is a small media text that is aimed at a target audience, however is greatly influential. The product can be highly specific of the market audience where they focus on a specific target audience, considering their age, gender and ethnicity. An example of niche products would be Asiana Magazine particularly aimed for British Asians.

The Great British Bake Off
This Television programme is a cooking show played on BBC1 which is rated 8.6/10. This may be because the audience watching it love cooking and trying new recipes. The programme is niche because it is specified toward a target audience who love cooking shows and have an interest with what the competitors are cooking and may also find the competition intriguing and exciting.

BBC Asian Network
Asian Network is a Radio station located in Britain which is aimed for British Asians to listen to and is aimed for a mixed gender. This Radio station is Niche because it is specifically targeted towards British Asians and serve people of South Asia. It is currently a huge success and they get over 600,000 listeners and enjoy the format of Music, News and Entertainment. I also listen to the station sometimes and I love the parts where they present stories of people around London anonymously and they're sometimes heartbreaking stories or mainly humorous stories that have happened on the day.

Mainstream: Is a media text that influences a large number of people. Mainstream products have a mass audience and consume popular texts such as sitcoms and soaps. A Mainstream audience includes children, men, women and adults and has an appropriate genre and BBFC age rating. An example of a mainstream product would be the TV show Baby Daddy which is a Romantic Comedy and is appropriate for all the family to watch.

Friends

The TV show Friends is an extremely successful Comedy show which probably most people love and also because it's aimed at young adults which is a large field. TV series are generally mainstream as each episode gets many views and as far as Friends is considered, they had been airing episodes since 1994 - 2004 which displays a huge success. 

BBC Radio
This radio station is very mainstream in Britain as the target audience is very wide range for all ages, genders and ethnicity. It is suitable and appropriate primarily for 15-29 year olds to listen to, however it is hard to judge which ages would listen to the type of music they play which in this case is current and popular music, played after 7PM, which could range out of the targeted audience as they could also prefer that genre of music. This comes across as a mainstream radio station as they also have other stations such as Radio 1,2,4 and 5.