
Media Theory Revision Guide
My Revision
Essential Film!
LNWH
LNWH Digital Effects Production
General
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Digital technologies enable the BBC to make radio products more cheaply. As a result of reduced production costs, audience metrics become less significant, enabling a wider range of niche content like LNWH to be produced by the broadcaster. Certainly, the sub 1 million loyal listenership of the show would be much harder to justify if production costs were higher.
Similarly, the move from analogue broadcasting technologies has freed up the BBC to offer content via an on demand portal.
LNWH is distributed, for example, through the BBC's digital iPlayer app where content can be archived for a relatively small cost, while iPlayer's ability to personalise audience schedules allows LNWH to maintain a small but stable listenership via what Chris Anderson called 'long tail consumption'.
It might further be argued that the show's repackaging into 15 minute slots helps to create appeal for smartphone listeners and for an audience who, increasingly, are consumers of content. The deployment too of emotive or enigmatic podcast titles like 'Feminist? Seriously' also helps to create visibility for those bite size shows in the vast digital catalogue of audio content that contemporary radio consumers have access to.
Personalisation
Tailoring user experiences to suit their individual needs. Online personalisation is enabled by web cookies, for example: computer code that can be used to tailor advertising on web pages.
Media terminology used
Niche audience
A very small audience segment. An audience that might be identified by a set of highly specific demographic or behavioural variables
Long tail consumption
A term coined by media theorist Chris Anderson to define a media product that sells few items at any one time, but can create meaningful sales or downloads over a long period of time. Shot tail sales, conversely, create huge volumes of interest for the short term, but don't create lasting interest.