Audience Evolution

New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences

Philip Napoli

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780231520942
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Medienwissenschaften

Today's consumers have unprecedented choice in terms of the technologies and platforms that access, produce, and distribute media content. The development and overlap of television, the internet, and other media technologies is fragmenting and empowering media audiences more than ever. Building on his award-winning book, Audience Economics, Philip M. Napoli maps the landscape of our current media environment and describes its challenge to traditional conceptions of the audience.

He examines the redefinition of the industry-audience relationship by technologies that have moved the audience marketplace beyond traditional metrics. Media providers, advertisers, and audience measurement firms now deploy more sophisticated tools to gather and analyze audience information, focusing on factors rarely considered before, such as appreciation, recall, engagement, and behavior. Napoli explores the interplay between political and economic interests in the audience marketplace and their effect on audience evolution. He recounts the battles waged between stakeholders over the assessment of media audiences and their efforts to restrict the functionality of new technologies. As Napoli makes clear, the very meaning of the media audience continues to evolve in response to changing technological, economic, and political conditions.

CHAPTER 1

CONTEXTUALIZING AUDIENCE EVOLUTION

Although this book focuses on the contemporary dynamics surrounding the evolution of media audiences, it is important to recognize that audience evolution is an ongoing process that is likely to persist into the future (when appropriate conditions are present) and that extends back into the past. This chapter looks backwards, aiming to provide both theoretical and historical contexts for contemporary developments in the evolution of media audiences.

Addressing these goals involves integrating two distinct bodies of literature, which have seldom been brought together. The first of these is the literature on media evolution. Media evolution in this case refers to the idea that media industry sectors essentially evolve over time in response to changing environmental conditions; these may be technological, economic, cultural, or regulatory. A growing body of literature has charted these evolutionary patterns and identified the key environmental changes that have triggered evolutionary responses. For the purposes of this book, this theoretical construct of media evolution is useful for providing an analytical starting point for the closely related concept of audience evolution being developed here. Indeed, a primary contention of this book is that a similar analytical framework can be applied to media audiences. That is, there is a wide range of changing environmental conditions that can affect how media industries conceptualize their audiences. As a result, old conceptualizations of audiences can gradually be replaced by new ones.

This relationship between the concepts of media evolution and audience evolution begins to make itself clear when we take into account the second body of literature being used to contextualize this analysis—involving what is termed here the rationalization of audience understanding. This work addresses the processes via which media industries seek to understand their audiences. Examining the totality of this literature (which dates back at least to the 1930s) provides a strong sense of how media industries’ conceptualizations of their audiences have evolved over time. As the label suggests, the process has been one of increased rationalization, in which efforts to understand media audiences have become increasingly scientific and data driven. This literature essentially provides the historical and theoretical foundation on which the present study’s model of audience evolution rests.

MEDIA EVOLUTION

As various analyses of media institutions and technologies have illustrated, it is useful to examine media systems and media industries through an evolutionary analytical lens (Napoli 1998a; Noll 2006; Stober 2004). From this perspective we see that media industry sectors tend to follow specific evolutionary patterns in response to changes in their external environment (Dimmick 2002). This applies to established media—in terms of how they respond to environmental changes (e.g., Boczkowski 2004b) such as the introduction of new, competing technologies—as well as to new media, as they navigate, and become integrated into, the established media system (Bolter and Grusin 2000; Cheong and Leckenby 2003; Greenberg 2008).

Thus, for instance, researchers have illustrated that changing sociocultural conditions, such as increased literacy or increased per capita income, can alter the environmental conditions for media in ways that not only affect the extent to which a particular medium is utilized, but also how it is utilized and even the nature of the content it provides. Increased literacy, for instance, helped book publishing change from an industry that served only the highly educated—and publishing only content appealing to such an audience—to one serving a much wider range of audience interests. The Internet similarly evolved from serving primarily the needs of the government and academic research communities to being embraced by—and serving the needs and interests of—a much broader spectrum of the population (Abbate 2000). Such patterns, which have been exhibited in other media as well, such as radio and television, represent what has been termed the “elite to popular/mass” stage of media evolution (Merrill and Lowenstein 1971).

Technological changes—particularly changes in available media technologies—have also been a fundamental driver of media evolution. Most often such changes have been instrumental in moving media from the popular/mass stage to what has been termed the “specialized” stage, in which more mature media technologies often find themselves struggling to remain viable in the face of competition from new media (see Lehman-Wilzig and Cohen-Avigdor 2004; Napoli 1998a). Thus, for instance, the arrival of television forced fundamental changes to the motion picture industry, leading the industry to focus much more intently on the adolescent and young adult audience (the audience segment exhibiting the greatest continued interest in leaving the house to watch a movie). The widespread adoption of television also compelled the motion picture industry to alter its content in ways that would better differentiate it from what could be found on television at that time. Consequently, the motion picture industry came to increasingly emphasize content characteristics such as special effects, sex, violence, and foul language, as these content elements were either unavailable via broadcast television due to regulatory restrictions, or did not transfer well to the small, black-and-white screens of the early television era (Napoli 1998a).

The pattern here is typically one of differentiation or adaptation, as established media industry sectors seek to maintain their viability in the face of a new competitive threat that is coopting much of the old medium’s audience and/or revenue streams (Stober 2004). Dimmick (2002) has termed this process “competitive displacement.” Today, for instance, there is much discussion about the challenging future facing the printed newspaper in the face of seemingly insurmountable competition from various online news sources (e.g., Carr 2008a, 2008b; Kinsley 2006; Kuttner 2007). These discussions tend to focus on possible ways that the traditional newspaper can effectively differentiate itself from its online competition, whether in terms of cultivating new categories of readers, or in terms of broadly rethinking the role and function of the printed paper and altering content accordingly. Thus, for instance, many newspapers at this point are ceding the provision of traditional content categories such as stock quotes, classified ads, and even foreign news, and instead are focusing more on the provision of consumer and entertainment-oriented information (e.g., Project for Excellence in Journalism 2008; Saphir 2008). Other papers have cut back or eliminated their film, television, art, and food critics, in part under the presumption the Web provides an effective substitute via the many easily accessible opinion aggregation sites that not only provide audiences with access to a much wider range of opinions, but also allow these same audiences to contribute their opinions as well (Carr 2008a).

One aspect of media evolution that is particularly relevant to this book involves the ways in which changes in the nature of information about media audiences have contributed to the process. Thus, for instance, Barnes and Thomson (1988, 1994) illustrate how increased, more affordable, and more widely available computing power played a fundamental role in transforming magazines from a traditional “mass” medium into a medium in which stakeholders became much more focused on attracting and monetizing more narrowly defined niche audiences. Essentially, the ability to gather and analyze more granular data about media audiences allowed for more targeted approaches to identifying desirable audiences for advertisers, and thus provided an important impetus for magazines to reorient themselves in ways that served more narrowly targeted audiences (see also Wehner 2002). It would seem, however, that these new analytical tools were an important, though likely not a sufficient, condition for the conceptualization of the magazine audience to change in ways that fundamentally altered the dynamics of magazine publishing. During the period these new analytical tools were being developed it was also the case that the rapid diffusion of television was enabling this new medium to effectively supplant mass-appeal magazines as the primary mechanism via which advertisers reached large, undifferentiated audiences (Barnes and Thomson 1988, 1994). The key point here—and one that will recur throughout this discussion of the process of audience evolution—is that both improvements in the available analytical tools and technological changes that undermined the status quo were necessary conditions for the process of media evolution to take place.

Finally, it is important to recognize that the process of media evolution does not occur without substantial institutional resistance, as industry sectors engage in various efforts to preserve their established position, whether by attacking the emerging media through legal or economic means, or by attempting to adopt the characteristics of the new, threatening medium (Lehman-Wilzig and Cohen-Avigdor 2004). Thus new media technologies—ranging from radio to cable television, to the VCR, to file-sharing and online video aggregation services. to digital video recorders and search engines—have been attacked in various ways by established media seeking to curb or eliminate emerging competitive threats. In some instances these resistance efforts have taken the form of legal actions, whether it be the Hollywood movie studios going all the way to the Supreme Court in pursuit of the outright ban of the VCR (Greenberg 2008; Lardner 1987), or the record labels suing not only the creators of various music file-sharing services but also the most egregious users of these services (Bhattacharjee et al. 2006; Waterman, Ji, and Rochet 2007).

In other instances, this resistance has taken the form of concerted efforts to deny the new, threatening medium access to desired resources—most often content. Thus, for instance, the newspaper industry went to great lengths to prevent the nascent radio industry from conveying newspaper stories over the air (see Chester 1949; Jackaway 1995). The motion picture industry for a time refused to license its films to the emerging television industry (Napoli 1998a). And, more recently, multimedia content providers such as Viacom have been very aggressive in preventing their content from being accessible via services such as YouTube (Viacom v. YouTube 2007). Such resistance strategies often accompany simultaneous efforts by the established media to diversify into the new media. Thus, newspapers very quickly became purchasers of radio stations; the motion picture industry eventually became the primary supplier of programming to the television industry; and television programmers and the motion picture studios have been aggressively developing and rolling out online distribution platforms for their content.

As Winston (1999) illustrates, these strategies of resistance and diversification can substantially reduce the destabilizing effects of new media. As a result, the effects of new media tend to be incremental and evolutionary as opposed to dramatic and revolutionary, as the established media are able to exert influence over the development of new media both externally (via resistance) and internally (via diversification). Winston (1999) goes so far as to propose a “law of the suppression of radical potential” in relation to new media. He convincingly demonstrates that established institutional interests and structures serve to limit the extent to which any new media technology is able to fully realize its revolutionary potential, not only in terms of how the technology itself is used by audiences and content providers, but also in terms of how dramatically it affects the established behavioral patterns and competitive dynamics within the broader media system. Thus, for instance, despite early rhetoric surrounding its revolutionary potential (see, e.g., Smith 1972), cable television evolved in a manner quite similar to established broadcast television and became well integrated into the established dynamics of the commercial television industry (Mullen 2003). Similarly, the VCR evolved primarily into an extension of the Hollywood studios (Greenberg 2008). We may be seeing similar patterns at work within new media contexts such as the DVR and YouTube (see chapter 4).

As will become clear, these dynamics of resistance, which have proven to be an integral component of the process of media evolution, also play a central role in the process of audience evolution (see chapter 4), where once again we see how institutional interests in favor of the status quo can serve to limit the transformative effects that new technologies can potentially facilitate.

THE RATIONALIZATION OF AUDIENCE UNDERSTANDING

The concept of rationalization has been interpreted in a variety of ways and has been applied both theoretically and empirically in a wide range of contexts. It is most commonly associated with the work of sociologist Max Weber. Broadly, Weber (1978) defined the process of rationalization as a historical process involving the migration away from tradition. More concretely, it has been associated with processes such as increased reliance on bureaucratic organization, an increased emphasis on calculation, and the generation and utilization of specialized knowledge (Weber 1978). Subsequent explorations of the concept have identified four central components of the process of rationalization: (a) the refinement of techniques of calculation; (b) the enhancement of specialized knowledge; (c) the extension of technically rational control over natural and social processes; and (d) the depersonalization of social relationships (Brubaker 1984). These processes of rationalization have been associated with a variety of spheres of endeavor, including management (Beniger 1987) and public policymaking (Stone 2001), as well as communications-related areas such as public opinion assessment (Herbst 1995; Herbst and Beniger 1994; Igo 2007), marketing (Turow 2006), and advertising (Laird 1998).

As will become clear, all of these elements of the process of rationalization are prominent in the history of media organizations’ approaches to audience understanding. Indeed, to the extent that rationalization has been described as “a central element of institutional theories of organization” (Townely, Cooper, and Oakes 1999:3), it is particularly well-suited to enhancing our understanding of how media organizations conceptualize their audiences. This connection was recognized as early as 1957 by market researcher Leo Bogart, who observed that tendencies toward rationalization in the media sector “seem to have emerged as part of the same wave of rationalization that has produced, since Frederick Taylor, several generations of industrial efficiency experts” (1957:133; see also Bogart 1986b).

Within the context of media organizations and media audiences, the notion of the rationalization of audience understanding has involved efforts to bring greater empirical rigor and (primarily) quantitative methods to the processes of understanding a range of dimensions of audience behavior (Bogart 1957; Carey 1980; Maxwell 2000), under the presumption that these analyses facilitate greater predictability and greater control of audience behavior (see, e.g., Ahlkvist 2001; Rossman 2008). These efforts have been pursued via the integration of various forms of analytical specialists, the gathering of various forms of (typically quantitative) data, as well as the development of increasingly specialized skill sets (Rossman 2008; Turow 2006).

These efforts to enhance knowledge, predictability, and control in relation to the audience have, however, been accompanied by the kinds of analytical simplifications that historically have been associated with the process of rationalization. As Beniger (1987) notes, the increased information processing that is at the core of the process of rationalization generally can be achieved only by structuring systems of data gathering and processing that are highly selective in terms of the nature of the material gathered, in order to avoid information overload. This of course limits possible perceptions or analytical orientations toward the particular social phenomenon under observation.

Also of particular importance to this analysis is the extent to which the process of rationalization is reliant on mechanisms for two-way communication between the observer and the observed (Beniger 1987). Such reciprocal communication is essential for the gathering of information about those under study (in this case, the audience) in order to facilitate efforts at analysis and prediction. Thus any developments that facilitate greater reciprocity in communication between media organization and audience have the potential to intensify the rationalization of audience understanding.

THE EARLY INTUITIVE MODEL OF AUDIENCE UNDERSTANDING

Most historical accounts of the evolution of audience understanding within various sectors of the media industry emphasize the early reliance on what is perhaps best termed the intuitive model. Under this approach, the subjective, often instinctive, judgments of content producers, distributors, and exhibitors regarding audience tastes, preferences, and reactions were the primary mechanisms via which organizational decisions were made. Historical accounts of early mass media, such as motion pictures, books, and newspapers, frequently highlight this analytical approach (see, e.g., Eaman 1994; Hagen 1999; Handel 1950; Powell 1978; Silvey 1974). Austin, for instance, presents the story of Harry Cohn, president of Columbia Pictures in the 1930s and 40s, “who claimed he had a ‘foolproof’ method for predicting the success of a movie: ‘If my fanny squirms, it’s bad. If my fanny doesn’t squirm, it’s good’” (1989:1). Similarly, accounts of the newspaper industry emphasize how decision-making regarding news content has historically been driven largely via the application of the news values and editorial judgment cultivated within the journalistic profession, with the audience existing as a somewhat distant abstraction from the standpoint of journalists and editors (see DeWerth-Pallmeyer 1997; Min 2004; de Sola Pool and Shulman 1959; Sumpter 2000).

This approach frequently resulted in information vacuums regarding the nature of the interaction between content and audience. For instance, one account of this time period notes the observation of a 1920s-era motion picture director, who complained that “production departments of the major companies ‘have not the slightest idea what happens to our pictures,’ and a director had no way of finding out ‘why his picture didn’t do well in the South, why his picture didn’t do well in England, why his picture could not be shown in Germany’” (Maltby 1999:23).

Some analysts have suggested that the fact that the economic conditions for these early mass media were relatively favorable created little demand for more rigorous empirical analyses to guide strategic decision-making (see, e.g., Austin 1989; Bakker 2003). For instance, according to early film audience researcher Leo Handel, “The young industry, which could readily finance research projects, found little motivation to do so because the new, e...