This Week In Audience: Measuring Audience Value – Three Things We Learned About Audiences

This Week: How are we measuring the value that audiences get for their money?… Think you own the culture you just bought? In the digital age, maybe you don’t… Wow!  fan conventions are making stars really big bucks.

1. What’s The Audience Value? Do We Even Know? Pretty much every arts institution understands that the care and feeding of your audience is important. But do they really? “As an audience researcher, I am constantly disappointed about the ways in which core audiences are treated by arts organisations. They are often aggressively marketed, cynically courted and increasingly propositioned for money. But rarely are they treated as equal partners in the processes of meaning-making and engaged with in any authentic or meaningful way.”
2. How Do We “Own” The Culture We Buy? Generations of us have grown up with the idea that if we want to consume culture we need to pay and own it. Now in the digital world we’re supposed to own it but what does “owning” really mean in the age of streaming and digital copies? “If you are like most consumers you are probably unaware of the more subtle ways that your digital books — and movies, games, and other media purchases — are different from physical copies. That’s because your rights to those digital things are filtered through a maze of intellectual property law and limited by the fine print that you agree to when you buy them.”
3. Where The Big Bucks Are? Servicing Fan Conventions: Conventions such as ComicCon bring in fan favorites to meet and greet the fans and sign autographs for money. “Fan conventions, where stars can take home hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for a few hours of time, once were the domain of has-beens and sci-fi novelties. But the business has become so lucrative — think $500,000 for Captain America’s Chris Evans or The Walking Dead favorite Norman Reedus to appear — that current TV and film stars are popping up at events like Salt Lake City Comic-Con and Heroes and Villains Fan Fest.”

Image: Pixabay – Geralt