Sense of Belonging among the Audience - Essay Example

The storyline of the program should be the reflection of the events in his life but just things that he comes across every day or even his ambitions and opinions (Alpert, 1992).

Diversity creating social goodwill

Diversity plays a major role in shaping a media channel's public image, and a high reputed image among the audience is always fruitful. Diversity basically displays respect for the audience, it shows that every member in the audience is equally important and the channel would want to cater to each and every individual. It is also a great tool to retain the viewers to a particular channel as they now have different things to look forward to rather than the monotonous programming (Onah & Anyanwu, 1988).

Word of mouth is trusted more than any other source of advertisement

Innovation is the main tool to attract audiences; people always appreciate innovation and hard work. It creates a sense of curiosity among the audience and forces them to keep coming back to the channel; people would stick to one channel if they are offered something out of the ordinary after certain time intervals (Alpert, 1992). The perception of being innovative gives the channel a positive word of mouth among the viewers, this becomes the source of advertisement for the channel, and people would prefer watching a channel that was recommended by their peers rather than some critic’s recommendation or even a conventional advertisement.

Authenticity always pays off

One of the major factors that channels lose viewers to other channels is the lack of originality; channels in their urge to be recognized as innovative get carried away at times and start copying which is not appreciated by the majority as the ‘me too’ approach appears to be an act of desperation especially in case of T.V. channels. People switch channels and choose to watch one over the other in the search for something different hence a perception of not being original can harm the channel’s business as people will not even bother having a look at it thinking there will be nothing different than the other channel is not showing. Hence originality is also a judging and differentiating factor among the audience between the channels (Benesch, Frey, & Stutzer, 2006).

Production quality as an edge

In the television industry, there have been several advancements in the past few years; production quality has created its own importance in shaping perceptions of people. Visual attraction of the programs is regarded with great importance by the audiences, a channel having great program but with poor production, quality may not be able to attract people while at the other hand a channel with mediocre programming might be preferred just because of its production quality, as no matter how much we deny it but we all are attracted to the visual quality and the content becomes secondary (Onah & Anyanwu, 1988).

Objectivity makes it easier to follow

This is the factor most implied on the news channels, as they have a responsibility to pass on timely and objective news to the viewers that are free from any bias. At times news channels tend to take sides with either of the parties involved and as a result, lose their credibility, then these channels only attract audiences that share the same opinion as the channel’s hence they lose their mass audience. This perception of being biased stops people from even stopping at these channels at times thinking that whatever they air will have its own elements of prejudice involved (Aslam, 2008). On the other hand, channels that follow an objective approach are able to attract a greater audience as serve the true purpose of a news channel of presenting news as it is rather than showing just one perspective of the scenario and creating judgments.

Conclusion

Perception of a human being is an influence of many factors, the way they were brought up the culture they belong to, and the environment they live in, these perceptions then impact their behavior. Media habits especially television habits are strongly influenced by people’s perceptions as well, a combination of many factors including some mentioned above help create the viewers a perception about the channels and enables them to make their choices and pick one channel over the other.