Blog Post 4: Audience Demand

Audience demand, although subtle and relatively overlooked as a major component, was perhaps the strongest driving force in shaping the formation of the radio industry in the 1920s, and it is still a major force of its ever changing influence.  Although radio at the time was on the cutting edge of the media diffusion curve, it is still the preservation of the population’s partaking in the new media that ultimately dictates whether or not its incorporative longevity will sustain. 

The concept of audience demand is simple and obvious; it is what people want to see, hear or know about.  The media take this effect into consideration and base the production upon the response, because if the audience is not interested in the message being presented they will not watch; therefore, the media must internalize the demands of the audience into the message and not portray a message unrelated to those demands.  It is the targeting tool of the media that determines what will be presented to sustain an audience to ultimately make money, the reason the media appeals to an audience in the first place.  The audience decides the course of the media, not the other way around.

Media now provides a perfect example of this form of incorporation during the 1920s and after.  The integration of comic book heroes such as “Superman” and pulp-fiction westerns like “Riders of the Purple Sage” shows how common themes that interested audiences, previously via alternative media, were transmitted to the radio to conversely transfer the audience along with them.  The radio also began to branch away from just producing news and music to playing popular attractions such as “comedies, variety shows, soap operas, detective dramas, sports, suspense, and action adventures”.  With the presentation of a much larger spectrum of allures, the number of target audiences increases.  With this foundational groundwork, radio was able to capture an audience that would ultimately become the future audience of later technological advancements, such as television, that would have otherwise not indulged in such media; thus, the power of audience demand is to be regarded as one of the most influential aspects of the shaping of the radio industry as well as its future.