Target Audiences

Being able to read and appeal to your audience is a principle that has come up in every journalism class I've taken. Inevitably, segmentation and generalization of your audience will lead to at least one person in your audience being left out or uninterested in your content. However, media still seems to be going in a much more specialized direction.

One example I found of this is MTV. MTV has been around since 1981, and according to Wikipedia has had news programming since the late 80's. Being a college student, I'm right in the target audience for which MTV is trying to reach. I found it interesting that the channel even has a news source, considering that so much information is already available through other much more respected sources. With shows like The Hills, Tila Tequila and Jackass (all amusing, but none intellectually stimulating), MTV doesn't exactly seem like the first place a student would turn to for a daily dose of news.

I bring up MTV because I did a Google search for stories on the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings, and their website came up. While there was a story on Virginia Tech, it was really the only one that could be considered newsworthy. The top stories recapped American Idol episodes, discussed Ashlee Simpson pregnancy rumors, and listed the Making the Band 4 tour schedule.

I looked at other news sources, like CNN. They regularly publish stories on American Idol. Fox News also had a story on Ashlee Simpson. So did the NY Times, the Denver Post and even the BBC. While media may be trying to specialize different markets and audiences, it seems that people have more of the same interests and commonalities than they realize. With so many options to choose from as far as information and news media goes, I doubt audiences just stick to one source anymore. MTV may have some entertainment stories that I as a young adult would be interested in, but their limited content forces me to look to other media for news.