Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences

No longer beholden to the programming or publication schedules of media producers, today's consumers access media content through a number of unprecedented and increasingly prevalent platforms, and the development and overlap of television, the internet, and other outlets have fragmented media audiences more than ever, making the effort to reach them more complex. Building on his award-winning book, Audience Economics, Philip M. Napoli maps the landscape of our current media environment and describes its challenge to traditional conceptions of the audience. He also considers the changes that new approaches to audience measurement have produced, both politically and culturally.

Napoli examines the ongoing redefinition of the industry-audience relationship by technologies that have moved the audience marketplace beyond traditional metrics. Today, media providers and audience measurement firms deploy new, more sophisticated tools to gather audience information, focusing on factors rarely considered before, such as appreciation, recall, engagement, and behavior. In doing so, the industry has tried to take advantage of new platforms as thoroughly as the consumers they hope to attract. Napoli traces the interplay between political and economic interests and their effect on audience evolution. He recounts battles between stakeholders over the assessment of media audiences and their efforts to restrict the functionality of new technologies, as well as their push to influence new measurements for television, radio, and the internet.