The Penumbra Effect and Readership

The Penumbra Effect  and Readership

In media the penumbra is the tiny audience that is unexpected, e.g. a elderly woman watching MTV with a child present.

Elderly Woman = Penumbra

Child Present = Main Audience

There are companies and organizations in the world which focus on finding readership results on every thing from television guides to music magazines.

One of the most well known readership organizations is NRS, which stands for National Readership Survey.

The National Readership Survey is a joint venture company in the UK between the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), the Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) and the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA). It provides audience research for print advertising trading in the UK. The survey covers over 250 of Britain's major newspapers and magazines, showing the size and nature of the audiences they achieve. It classifies audiences in a number of ways, one of which is the NRS social grade.

This is the statistics of music magazines form July 2013 - June 2014. These were recorded and inputted by NRS.

As you can see there is a difference in the type of magazines people enjoy. ABC1's (Higher up in the social class) enjoy some of the same things as C2DE's (Working Class).  The amount of ABC1's reading Kerrang compared to the amount of C2DE's reading it is not a dramatic change. However, the amount of ABC1's reading Radio times is drastically bugger than the amount of C2DE's reading it. This makes me believe that the content and genres of music involved is more appealing to people of a higher class.