Essay: Audiences

"How does your own experience of media consumption illustrate wider patterns of audience behaviour?"

Over the last ten years, we have seen a revolution in our media consumption habits, driven by the ubiquity of smartphones, the rise of social media and the rollout of broadband. Younger audiences are more inclined to use smartphones as opposed to linear television. The introduction of Netflix and YouTube has caused the rapid decline in linear television in people under the age of 40. This acceleration is mainly due to people having more access to internet with 35% of the world's population owning or having access to a phone. Older generations have a smaller change in the patterns that make up today's media consumption.

Media conglomerates such as Disney and Netflix have encouraged the use of SVODs - Streaming video on Demand - but has ultimately resulted in a decline in theatrical attendance as more streaming services are available for public use.  Large numbers of subscribers - for example, Netflix has roughly 209 million global paid memberships, and Disney+ has 116 million subscribers. Unfortunately with an increase in the number of streaming platforms this has caused an increase in piracy rates as people are unwilling to pay more money for further access to movies and TV shows. For example, the New Zealand film What We Do In The Shadows was heavily pirated. After the shutting down of a piracy website based in Mount Wellington, Auckland, the website revealed that, at 277,000 downloads, What We Do In The Shadows is one of its most heavily pirated movies. Online video narrowly reaches the most New Zealanders each day but SVOD and podcasts are the only media to have grown the size of their daily audiences in the past twelve months. New Zealanders continue to spend significantly more time watching TV(118 mins)  than using any other media, but the gap is closing as SVOD makes more appearances coming in next at 86 minutes. Traditional media still attracts the biggest audiences in some key time zones. For example, television still reigns supreme from 6-8:30pm. From 8:30 pm onwards, SVOD and online video are challenging TV for audience size.

Blockbusters such as Avengers: Endgame was released in theaters on April 24 2019, and has since been released additionally on streaming services such as Disney+ and Apple TV. It is much more accessible than smaller Indie films such as What We Do In The Shadows which is not as easily accessible on these streaming platforms. This allows for a larger audience viewing for the large conglomerates as they are more well known and also have a larger fanbase with the use of A-list actors with a large online presence - for example, Tom Holland who has 48 million followers on Instagram. Due to the impact of COVID-19, many more people are subscribing to these platforms, forming a broader audience for the online presence. In addition to this, Netflix uses complex algorithms to suggest to audiences what they might prefer to watch based on their preferences off recent viewings to further enhance viewers' experience.

Disney+ has introduced another level to their platform called 'Premier Access' which is a purchase option for subscribers to pay an extra $30 one-time fee to gain early streaming access to a movie that is still playing in theaters. This has been done with movies such as Black Widow and Cruella. However, this caused a great controversy since Scarlett Johansson's income was based off box office revenue made at theaters and this simultaneous release resulted in a decrease in her payment. The result of this was her filing a lawsuit against Walt Disney Co., alleging that the studio breached her contract by this simultaneous release.

Media fragmentation allows for the increasing choice and consumption of a range of media. As the use of technology becomes more frequent as a whole in society, technological convergence becomes more apparent as people no longer have to sit in front of a television in order to watch what they want. With several households owning multiple devices per family, people are now given the freedom to use their phones, laptops, and other devices to watch movies and consume media. Those aged 15-24 are roughly three times as likely to watch online videos (91%) as linear television (36%). Similarly for streaming music (81%) over radio (31%). Newspapers, a decade ago fairly commonplace, are a daily habit for a quarter of the population as a whole, but only 7% of those aged 15-24. Platforms since this survey was taken have been introduced on a wider scale, creating dominance over other outdated apps. Instagram has a 20% daily reach across all of us, and TikTok an impressive 11% - but among 15-24 year olds, Instagram reaches 56% daily and TikTok 39%. They are the platforms of the future.

Clay Shirky was one of the first media commentators to understand the impact that Web 2.0 technologies would have on the way that audiences interact with media production. People are no longer just consumers or producers of media, but have combined to become 'prosumers', where audiences are now also producing their own media in addition to consuming it. This is widely used by platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. Web 2.0 facilitates crowdsourcing, thus allowing the government to share information internally as well as with the public and therefore providing a platform from which innovation can occur. Because of the access to Web 2.0, this interactive web has paved a way for larger media conglomerates to use this information to aid their releases as production companies now release media that aligns with what audiences want to see come to fruition in the movies released.