Thursday 18/03/2010: Audience Research

Below is the questionnaire I created to carry out my audience research.

We are doing this questionnaire for part of our media studies portfolio to gain our audience research on newspapers. Questions that will be answered will have anonymous participants and will not be used personally. Personal information will be kept safe.

Please circle the correct answer where applicable

What sex are you?
Male
Female

What age are you?
Under 21 years olds
22-30 year olds
30-40 years olds
40-50 year olds
50-60 year olds
60+ year olds

What ethnicity are you?
White British
Pakistani
Afro – Caribbean
Dual Heritage
Indian
Other

Do you read newspapers?
Yes
no

How often do buy/read newspapers?
Once a day
Once a week
Once a month
Never

What newspapers do you read?
Express & Star
The Sun
Guardian
Telegraph
Daily Mail
Metro
Mirror
Other

What kind of size do you like the newspapers to be?
Broadsheet size
750 x 600 mm
Berliner
470 x 315 mm
Tabloid size
430 x 280 mm


What kind of content do you like on the front page?
Local News
Sport
Celebs
TV & Entertainment
Life & Style
Advice
Travel
Other

Do you use newspaper websites?
Yes
No


Below is the results of the Audience Research.

Here are the results to the questionnaire for the Audience Research. I surveyed 20 people.

What sex are you?
Male 8
Female 12

What age are you?
Under 21 years olds 2
22-30 year olds 4
30-40 years olds 5
40-50 year olds 6
50-60 year olds 3
60+ year olds 1

What ethnicity are you?
White British 11
Pakistani 0
Afro – Caribbean 2
Dual Heritage 0
Indian 3
Other 4


Do you read newspapers?
Yes 17
No 3

How often do buy/read newspapers?
Once a day 5
Once a week 8
Once a month 4
Never 3

What newspapers do you read the most?
Express & Star 9
The Sun 2
Guardian 0
Telegraph 0
Daily Mail 0
Metro 6
Mirror 3
Other 0

What kind of size do you like the newspapers to be?
Broadsheet size
(750 x 600 mm( 3
Berliner
(470 x 315 mm) 2
Tabloid size
(430 x 280 mm) 15

What kind of content do you like on the front page?
Local News 18
Sport 0
Celebs 2
TV & Entertainment 0
Life & Style 0
Advice 0
Travel 0
Other 0

Do you use newspaper websites?
Yes 7
No 13

Thursday 18/03/2010: Research on Express & Star newspaper

The Express & Star was founded in Wolverhampton in the 1880s by the Scottish American millionaire ‘Andrew Carnegie’ and a group of radical liberty party members including Thomas Graham. Carnegie’s aim was to campaign, through a string of regional daily newspapers, for the creation of a British Republic. His dream was to sack the monarchy, scrap the House of Lords and destroy every vestige of privilege in the land. By 1902 Carnegie had abandoned his mission and the newspaper has been owned by the Graham Family ever since. In the 1980s it paved the way for the computer revolution in the British newspaper industry and has remained in the forefront of publishing technology. The Express & Star has steadily overtaken its rivals to become the biggest-selling regional evening newspaper in Britain.

There is also an Express & Star sister paper called Shropshire Star which is based Shropshire and mid Wales, printing six editions per day, six days per week. Starting in 1964, when the Shropshire newspaper was the first evening newspaper in Europe, to be printed by offset. The readers have a particularly close affiliation with the newspaper. Within the circulation area, the Shropshire Star has an average issue readership of 223,000 adults, which represents 54% of the total adult population. Midlands News Association, which owns the express and star, also operates three commercial radio stations such as: Telford FM, Severn FM and The Wyre FM.

John Frederick Feeney originally published the ‘Birmingham Post’ newspaper under the name ‘Daily Post’ in Birmingham in 1857. This was the biggest selling broadsheet newspaper in the West Midlands, though it faced little if any competition in this category. In 1946 the paper stopped using advertisements on its front page and then replaced them with front-page news. The newspaper also changed to tabloid size in 2008. The post and Mail building, Birmingham opened in 1965 to accommodate the Post and Evening Mail newspapers, but The Post and is sister titles relocated to the restored Fort Dunlop building, three miles out of the city centre. After changing hands many times, the newspaper is now part of the Trinity mirror group. In February 2008 the newspaper re-launched its website as birminghampost.net. Then the paper moved to weekly publication in November 2009.

Thursday 11/03/2010

As a group we have been having some problems as team members are not completing task. Our original plan was to divide the work between ourselves, but now I have thought of doing all the research, planning and evaluation tasks individually and not relying on other people to do the work.

I have got feedback from my media teacher and i have realized there is more work to do than i originally thought. I will be working in my own time and over the weekend to get the research, planning and production tasks complete, so I can start on the evaluation tasks this time next week.

Thursday 04 March 2010

There have been a few lessons now where my team members have not been attending and the tasks that have been shared out between us are not being completed.

The research and planning have been carried out for the newspaper and poster and the poster is nearly complete and the basic design of the newspaper has been transfered to Microsoft Publisher.

We still need to carry out the research and planning for the radio advertisement. We have also been experiencing technical difficulties with software we have been using for the research and planning.