How much television do I watch a week?I watch between 5 and 10 hours a week.Do I have cable, satellite or Freeview? I have Freeview.Do I have a television set in my bedroom? No.What are my favourite television programmes? Doctor who, The Fades, Misfits, Top boy, The Imbetweeners, Phone Shop and Merlin.My answers build up a profile of a person as a media consumer.

An audience are people who speculate or listen to a form of text that is presented visually or spoken, for example, a radio or television program. A media product cannot exist without and audience.  The products that the creative media create are all designed for a specific audience.  Targeting the right product at the right audience in the right way is an important skill that all media producers must develop if their particular product is going to survive.Some target audiences are quite broad.  Olympic Games, for instance, will target a mass market.  Some products are targeted at a much narrower, specialised  target audience and is often referred to as a 'niche market'.An audience can be divided into several different categories. There are many categories and a singular person can be part of vast amounts of categories, some more than others. For example, a person may be a romanticist and loves watching romantic comedy's or reading romance novels. However, that same person may also watch action and horror movies. Also, there are many different age groups and ethnicities that people are classed into, for example, 'a middle aged African male' and a 'young teenage European girl'. Therefore, an audience may be be divided into several categories.I believe these categories are demographic; they are based on age, gender, social class, background/race and occupation.However, even within these categories there can be levels of gradation.For example the social class category consists of the following:

• A

- Upper middle class; Higher managerial, administrative or professional.

• B

- Middle class; Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional.

• C1

-Lower middle class; Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional.

• C2

- Skilled working class; Skilled manual workers.

• D

- Working class; Semi and unskilled manual workers.

• E

- Those at the lowest levels of subsistence; Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners and others who depend on the welfare state for their income.

Media organisations undertake audience research to find out information about their target audience using primary, secondary, quantitative and qualitative research methods and techniques.Media organisations use Primary research techniques such as focus groups, questionnaires and face-to-face interviews, to ascertain what would work well and what they could improve on.Secondary research can be obtained by using ratings and circulation figures from specialised media research organisations, providing a more accurate form of research.Audiences interact with and respond to different elements or codes,  There are verbal codes - language, visual codes - what is seen and aural codes - what is heard; normally through music.