Module 3

Capturing and Holding Viewer Attention  

It would be difficult to think of any business that's more competitive than TV broadcasting. The average viewer in the United States has dozens of TV channels to choose from.

Each year, millions of dollars are invested in trying to make successful new TV shows. And each year most of these attempts don't even make it to air (broadcast).    

But First You Must Get Their Attention!

The success of a TV show (and, therefore, your own professional success) will depend in large measure on your ability to effectively capture and hold an audience. And, once you do, you'd better have something interesting to communicate, or else they will quickly go elsewhere-either tune to another channel or just mentally tune you out.

But, you say, "I don't want to worry about all that, I just want to make TV shows that interest me."

That's great, but who's going to pay for them?   

Reality 101

Let's take a quick look at our Reality 101 course notes.

TV productions cost a lot of money, especially today. To cite just one example, in 1966, the budget for each full episode of Star Trek was $100,000. In 2003, each episode of Enterprise, which is similar in its form, costs about $100,000 per minute to produce. In 2005, you can add more than $15,000 to that figure.

Before people put up that kind of money they have to believe that there will be some kind of return on their investment.

Depending on the type of production, that return may be to effectively communicate a corporate message, to get viewers to understand a series of concepts, or, in the case of commercial television, to generate profits by selling products.

Hit the Target (Audience)

As we've noted, we use the term target audience to indicate the specific segment of a potential audience we are "aiming at."

No matter what type of production you plan on doing, you must start with a clear understanding of the needs and interests of your specific target audience.

Advertisers spend millions of dollars determining these things.   

Depending on the products they want to sell, advertisers will have certain demographic preferences. For designer jeans, for example, the target audience would be fairly affluent teenagers. The same advertisers wouldn't be interested in sponsoring reruns of Murder, She Wrote, which primarily appeals to an older audience.

By the way, the principles of determining the needs and interests of your target audience also apply to something as simple as producing a video for your class.  If your video is going to be evaluated solely by an instructor, you'll probably take a different approach than if it's intended for a graduation party. In either case, meeting the needs of your target audience is the key to success.

Let's look at just a few of the issues involved.

Using Audience-Engaging Techniques

When you really get down to it, you will find that audiences react emotionally to program content.

Even a logical, educational presentation evokes-for better or worse-an emotional response. Although people may want to believe that they are being totally logical in evaluating a program, it's their basic emotional reaction that most influences their evaluation.

What types of production content emotionally engages an audience?

First, we have an interest in other people, especially in "experiencing the experiences" of other people. We are interested in people who lead interesting (romantic, dangerous, wretched, or engrossingly spiritual) lives.

Part of this involves gaining new insights and being exposed to new points of view. This includes learning new things.

We also like content that reinforces our existing attitudes, and we tend to react against ideas that run contrary to our beliefs. Production people, therefore, must be careful in presenting ideas that blatantly challenge widely held beliefs.

The trick is to know how far you can go without alienating an audience. To cite a rather extreme example, a number of years ago an East Coast TV station did an exposé on a local police chief. An undercover reporter (one of my former students) put a camera in a lunch box and filmed the police chief clearly taking a bribe.

When the segment was broadcast, there was negative reaction-against the TV station. It seems that the police chief was popular with many people in the community and having the truth presented in this way challenged their long commitment to this individual. This reaction on the part of many viewers was justified by cries of entrapment, a liberal media bias against a law-and-order official, etc.

This wasn't the first time that a messenger was blamed for the message.

The same negative anti-media reaction took place with some people when former U.S. President Richard Nixon was forced to resign from office for engaging in illegal activities while in the White House. You might want to rent the video (feature-length film) All the President's Men to see how this came about.

The film represents an important piece of U.S. history presented in a dramatic and even exciting way.  It also illustrates how two tenacious reporters faced down major high-level opposition to expose wrongdoing.  Eventually, a U.S. president had to resign.

If a democracy is to be successful the news media have a social responsibility to bring to light truth-even though it might be unpopular with some people.

Audiences also like to hear about things that are new and things that generate some level of excitement.

This is why mystery, sex, fear, violence, and horror do so well at the box office. It also explains why we see so many car chases, explosions, and general instances of mayhem in our film and TV programs.

Such things stir our adrenaline and involve us emotionally. In short, they hold our attention.

This, of course, brings up the possibility of exploitation, presenting things that appeal to elements of human nature that-how shall we say this-aren't the most positive.

Sometimes there is a rather blurry line between honestly presenting ideas and stories and unduly emphasizing elements such as sex and violence just for the sake of grabbing and holding an audience.

Beyond a certain point audiences will sense they are being exploited and manipulated and resent it. And, keep in mind, the content of a production, good or bad, tends to rub off on the reputations of those who produce it-and even on the sponsors who support it.

With this general background on programming elements that appeal to audiences, we'll next turn to the production sequence.

But, first, here's some required reading for this section.

Note the first of the Word Squares below.