Friday, 26 September 2014

Identifying Family Guy's audience


Identifying Family Guy's audience

Family Guy's audience is hard to distinguish because of the different themes and humor that is presented, this can also be emphasized as most of its content can be classed as offensive, this due to the appearances of consistent jokes of: racism, innuendos, violence, dark humour, toilet humour, obesity, and mental instability. But although it pokes fun at these things it never really tries to offend the general public instead tries to get a laugh however small it might be.

Age - Family Guy has its self targeted at an audience aged between fifth-teen and fifty years of age this is so that its audience understand more clearly to what the jokes are poking fun at or even parodying. This is made prominent as the creators  recreate the scene in clear resemblance and sometimes use old footage of films and shows to reference the older audience, they also make reference towards to a younger audience by placing in comedic humor that is related towards the teenage characters Chris and Meg.

Gender - The show uses gender in a comedic appeal as it promptly makes fun of both genders, however the show usually focuses more on a male audience. The show dose not disrespect a female audience but more humours it in a relatable fashion, the show dose make fun at male gender as it consistently uses innuendos with most of the male cast.

SES - Socioeconomic status of audiences watching Family Guy would be from category B to E; people who would most likely have time to watch it; these would be people who are stressed to a certain extent of work related problems and would more than likely want to relax. This would be true for people who are more than likely to have more time in their daily life than most professional workers, who have a more busy schedule, who are almost always working.

BARB - Otherwise called Broadcasters' Audience Research Board is the organisation that complies audience measurement and television ratings in the UK. It was created in 1981 to replace a previous system whereby ITV ratings were complied by JICTAR (Joint Industry Committee for Television Audience Research), whilst the BBC did their own audience research. BARB numbers are extremely important to commercial television stations. The trading model that is used by television companies and advertising agencies depends on the number of people watching the shows, and the commercial attractiveness of those people. The advertising agency will pay the television station a certain amount of money based on the number of people watching a show. The BARB numbers are used to work this out. Higher BARB numbers usually mean more advertising revenue for the television station. When BARB is used with the mainstream audience of Family Guy that it has created for it's self the show will continually create more numbers the viewing pushing more advertisers.



Cultural understanding - There are a number of different cultural understandings that relate towards: race, references, and economic standing. An example of this was how the show took the mick out of 1980's shows themes such as their opening themes with the 'My Black Son' cutaway, Witch completely parodies the stereotypical lyrics that where normally ported straight from the general premise of the show, where Peter sings on how he now lives with his black son he apparently has with an added gag of saying, "also he's a ninja"referring to how ninjas where a thing in the 80's. Another would be the joke that involved Peter seeing a movie and stereotyping a movie he called a "chick flick" meaning he only sees it as something for women to get involved in and not for guys. The Joke here is that it shows how ironic Peter's opinion towards it can be as Peter is the only one in the female audience to really get into the film. This is exemplified by Peter: pulling up his legs, sobbing silently and exclaiming how 'wonderful' it was. A more obvious example is how the creators dedicated three whole episodes towards Star Wars both parodying it in many different ways and referencing alot of pop culture quotes and images a really big example of this was the under title Blue Harvest witch was the working title of Star Wars Return of the Jedi. 

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