Audience and Institutions Essay

"How does your own experience of media consumption illustrate a wider pattern and trend of audience behaviour?"

My own experience of media consumption, in many ways, demonstrates and mirrors current trends in audience behaviour. 

There is a downward trend for broadcast TV by 83% which is the result of the increase subscription video-on-demand services (SVOD) such as Netflix, Lightbox, Neon, NZ On Screen.  As a response to this, one of the developments in 2016-2018 was the closure of FOUR, TVNZ kid zone and the zone.  According to findings in my audience survey research, 74% of the respondents choose 'streaming services' as their main source of entertainment.  Netflix provides licensed and original movies and TV shows both of which are popular content. Unlike shows from the TV channels, there are no advertisements interrupting watching time. Instead, it provides flexibility through the pause and play button allowing audiences to decide when they want to take a break. 
The price for a standard HD plan on Netflix is $13 per month costs less compared to purchasing individual physical copies of the movie or show which explains the downward trend of DVD consumption  (other streaming services have similar pricing plans). In 2018, Netflix had over 125 million subscribers worldwide which made people wonder if 'Netflix was killing the cinema'.  Personally, I've gone to the cinemas less since I've become a subscriber of Netflix- it has given me a range of movies to choose from.  Home-viewing has given the luxury of convenience. However, with the launch of the new Disney+ (SVOD) in November 2019, Netflix faces another competitor which has 50 million subscribers as of April 2020. It is a successful conglomerate with many acquisitions which include the popular Pixar(2006), Marvel(2009), LucasFilms(2012) and Fox (2019 gaining rights to Marvel characters, Star Wars characters and National Geography. 

Youtube is the second most-used social media site with 1.9 million users according to the global and NZ digitisation trend in 2019.  I use youtube to listen to and sometimes watch music videos.  Though, survey findings (2018) by nzonair indicates that Spotify is used 4% more than youtube or Vimeo. Youtube is one of the media platform used for cross-media convergence. Most of the music videos I've listened to are a soundtrack of a movie. The hashtag features have helped to identify these upcoming movies more easily along with the singing artist. Increase transmission of the audience from being a consumer to a producer- for instance, by commenting on the video- is a form of interaction with the media content which helps to create more awareness.  Movie industries are using social media and websites- another form of cross-media convergence- for marketing movies. For example, one of the highest-grossing movie Jurassic World (2015) with a box office of $$1.31 billion had two fictional websites that went viral including information that was absent from the movie. Games such as Lego Jurassic World & Jurassic World: The Game were released in 2015 it delivered similar content to the movie and could play on a various technological device- this an example of technological convergence.  In 2014, non-media products were released to promote the movie which included film stills and 500 copies of the Jurassic World posters. Another example of synergy is selling DVD, board games, party equipment based on the popular Disney movie High School Musical.  

I use the internet a lot to research information. Google is quick and efficient in finding answers to questions on the search engine. According to data from a survey conducted in 2019,  a huge amount of 4.388 billion of the world's population is connected to the internet. The proliferation of the internet allows audiences to access numerous media platforms and it has led to fragmentation; this is when audiences are split up across different media platform as a result of choice. The most-used device in New Zealand is the mobile phone with 92% penetration which is the device I use the most also. As technology changes, different technological systems evolve to perform a similar task in a more advanced way. This coming together of technology is called technological convergence. iPhone is a key example of this as everything is in the palm of the hand making it convenient for people a variety of functions on the phone no longer has to be physical such as a calculator, clock, calendar and so on.