Assignment name - Course: Final Assignment - Milestones in Communication Science
Word count: 1298 words
Final Assignment
Every week the comedy show 'Cheers' airs on a Dutch commercial television network. The producers are
having a discussion on the price for advertisement space in the commercial break of this show. There is a 15%
decline in regular viewers of the show on television. There is however a steep rise of 24% viewers of the show
via the on-demand app of network. The commercials also play during these on-demand sessions of the show.
Please write a memo for the producers, discussing the show's reach. Make use of the theories and concepts
on reach and audience formation from the book.
With the broadcasting of TV shows comes the awareness of related mediated contents and messages, in
which advertisements are crucial for such companies’ gain alone, but also a good measure of the show’s
success in audience reach. Unargurably, the advertisements are one of the good measures for a content’s
financial success, alongside with other transmedia-related elements. For example, there are popular TV
shows which acquired high ratings from critics and the audience, but fall short in investments and
probability of continual in comparison to some lower-rated yet more commercially popular TV shows.
Discussions on how ‘Anne with an E’ was cancelled while the recent Netflix’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’ is still
continued despite fans of the original work’s hatred is one example, perpetuating preference for commercial
and financial success over artistic aspects. Especially for a show like ‘Cheers’, which has been release 40 years
ago and now re-aired on commercial network, its marketability and financial aspects are evidently more
prioritized, and strategies over advertisement space and the corresponding prices are of much importance.
Looking at the 15% decline in regular viewership of the show on television and the 24% rise of viewership on
on-demand app of network, there are certain audience trends to be analyzed to acquire the best approaches
to the audience demography and the most suitable corresponding topic for advertisement, advertisement
spaces, and advertisement price. With such regards in mind, I hereby discuss and connect the central themes
on privatized digitization, audience read, trend, and formation, and make use of platform logic, uses
and gratification approaches, and further relate these to the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies,
and Toronto School of Communication Theory.
The 15% decline in regular television viewership in correspondence to the 24% rise of on-demand app of
network viewership signals a trend towards privatized digitization afforded by technological
advancement. Afforded by the technological advancement that allows people’s media consumption to be
more personal, more curated and more private, the audience nowadays no longer have to succumbed to
popular mediated messages and can actively choose their media consumption. This signals a shift in the
model of audience, from a core-periphery model to a breakup model. Each viewers are no longer
substantiated by the dominating local paradigm, but they consequentially break into different groups
which are bonded by culture and preferences. In a way, this can perpetuated the argument on media
tribalization, as people would be divided into ‘imaged communities’ of self-identified interests and
perspectives. This shift signals a significant priority of personal preference and invidualsim in TV
viewership, that even though the popular messages and preferred connotations are still embedded in such
