TV Industry - The Walking Dead - Audience - 13.5

The Walking Dead - Audience

Creating Audience

Once a media text has been made, its producers need to ensure that it reaches the audience it is intended for. All media texts will have some sort of marketing campaign attached to them. Elements of this might include

• posters
• Interactivity on the show's website
• print, radio, TV and Internet advertisements
• trailers
• promotional interviews (eg stars appearing on chat shows, information leaked to Internet bloggers)
• tie-in campaigns (eg a blockbuster movie using McDonalds meals)
• Social media, Facebook Twitter.
• Merchandising (t-shirts, baseball caps, key rings)

Marketing campaigns are intended to create awareness of a media text. Once that awareness has been created, hopefully audiences will come flocking in their hundreds of millions.

Targeting

Task 1: Discuss ways in which The Walking Dead TV series (any or all seasons) has targeted its audience.

Related links:

TWD

Record US Audiences

TWD Ratings success

The very young TWD audience

Task 2: TWD relies on audiences engaging with the characters. The audience often has information that the chacters do not. Discuss this and compare with TWD other texts of the same or similar genre such as The Vampire diaries when considering audience engagement.

Audience Positioning

Slides that briefly explain the effect of using a range of shots within a film and their effect on the audience:

Mid angle shot-This shot is used so the audience can see the distance between two characters. This also shows tension between them, as one threatens the other; so the audience can distinctly recognize the enemy or threat.

A high angle shot enables the audience to be aware that the character or characters are either crouching or moving slowly in order to stay hidden. The positioning of the camera gives the audience an idea of their vulnerability in the situation.

A high angle shot may also be used in situations such as the one in this image. It has been used to capture the vast amount of zombies portraying how outnumbered the survivor is on his horse.

Debates 

• Deviance / Threat 
• Moral Panics Cohen, S, 1972. 
• Deviance (sociology), actions or behaviors that violate social norms; 
• • media plays a part in defining and shaping social problems and perceptions of threat. 
• • This media representation and subsequent societal reaction may INCREASE the deviance and threat. “An initial act of deviance, or normative diversity (for example, in dress) is defined as being worthy of attention and is responded to punitively. 
• The deviant or group of deviants is segregated or isolated and this operates to alienate them from conventional society. They perceive themselves as more deviant, group themselves with others in a similar position, and this leads to more deviance.” (Cohen, 1972: 18)
• Classic structure 
• • Concern: that the behaviour of the group or category in question is likely to have a negative impact on society. 
• • Hostility: towards the group in question increases, and they become "folk devils". A clear division forms between "them" and "us". 
• • Consensus: a widespread acceptance that the group in question poses a very real threat to society. Disproportionality: The action taken is disproportionate to the actual threat posed by the accused group.
•  • Volatility: Moral panics are highly volatile and tend to disappear as quickly as they appeared due to a wane in public interest or news reports changing to another topic.

in order to truly build a society in fiction, a writer has to study what their society considers deviant. 

Popular culture has long been fascinated with zombies, and the first well-known Western example of this is obviously in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. 

But there are references to flesh-eating dead as far back as in The Epic of Gilgamesh. Our fascination with zombies in one form or another has been around for centuries.

And while deviance can take many, many forms, is there really anything more deviant than the dead rising to consume the living? NO.

Popular culture has advanced the notion of zombies recently, with a few notable exceptions. 
The Walking Dead, both the TV show and the graphic novel. Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead. I Stories with tension and danger. 

Zombies. Shamblers, moaners, walkers, undead, the risen, biters, crawlers, uglies. 
Mindless masses of once living humans craving human flesh.

If you look at the classic zombie movie, Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the violence is understated. The audience was  different in 1968. 
These were people accustomed to I Love Lucy, Gomer Pyle, and Gunsmoke. Fast forward to today, and we’ve got movies likeZombieland, The Dead, and the upcoming film adaptation of World War Z. Even movies meant to be comedic like Shaun of the Dead, incorporate more violence and gore than ever before. 
The modern zombie connoisseur cuts his teeth on The Walking Dead,the show's audiences know what gore is all about.

Does the modern zombie reader want to return to the nonviolent zombie of Romero’s time? 
No?
Today’s zombies fans want realism. They don’t want the story sugarcoated or dumbed down. 
In fact, most zombie fans expect a healthy dose of gore and complain if they don’t get it. Fans of the TV version of The Walking Dead did just that after a season of what they saw as too little action and too much sitting around the farm. This season reflects the fans desire for more zombie killing, blood, death, and the struggle for survival, not just avoiding the walkers.

Do zombie fans expect or even want gore? Or, should zombie stories be homogenised (made uniform or similar) to fit a larger audience? Consider society's attitude to deviance.

Responses

Task3:
Discuss how TWD provokes audience response.
Consider:
Preffered/Oppositional readings
What messages are given through the show, characters about humanity.
The secondary audience. Young people, people who read the comics.
How has brand awareness been increased?

Possible exam questions:

• How do your three main texts position audiences?
• What do texts offer audiences? Refer to your three main texts in your answer.
• Explore the different ways your three main texts target audiences
• Discuss the audience appeal of your three main texts.
• Describe niche and mainstream audiences with specific text examples.
• Explain and justify how TWD has been encoded to gratify both passive and active audiences.
• Identify the main target audience of TWD

Furthermore, The Walking Dead provides evidence that a range of age groups will watch AMC, as the series’ second season never dipped below six million viewers (averaging closer to eight), with almost all viewers in the coveted 18-49 demographic. 
There is no guarantee that these viewers appreciate the deliberate pacing or the interesting tweaks from comic to television series… I mean, I attribute the viewership of The Walking Dead primarily to the routine zombie-slaying action.

Measuring Audiences

Measuring the number of viewers and listeners for a TV/Radio programme or whole station's output is a complex business. 
Generally, an audience research agency (eg BARB) will select a sample of the population and monitor their viewing and listening habits over the space of 7 days. The data gained is then extrapolated to cover the whole population, based on the percentage sample. It is by no means an accurate science and you can find about some of the techniques used here . The numbers obtained are known as the viewing figures or ratings.

- AMC's TWD is targeted at a niche and more active audience. 

Consider:
Passive audiences as described by the Effects model and Active audiences as described by the Uses and Gratification theory in relation to TWD.
Scheduling, regulation, watershed.