If media are the avenues by which the public receives information and entertainment, then these avenues must have 'street signs' to guide the broadcasters to which direction will lead them to their audiences. Whenever you are writing a newspaper, or broadcasting a television program, or writing a book, one must always know "Who is the audience for my content?" The content might define what you are delivering to the audience, but the medium will define how you will get it to that audience, and even how large an audience you can reach. Every medium is therefore concerned with which groups of people will define their audience. Are these audiences defined by their geographic location, their interests, their profession, their political perspective, their lifestyle? Oftentimes we recognize that some content or program is unsuccessful in reaching its target audience, but we don't fault the medium for not being able to reach its target audience because the medium is only the vehicle to deliver the content to that audience.
The classic case of a medium that was able to reach a huge audience with one particular program was the infamous 1938 broadcast by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre of "The Invasion From Mars". Radio was a relatively new medium at the time of this broadcast, and the relationship between listeners and the broadcasts was still developing. Thousands of people reacted to the play as if it were an actual report of invading creatures from Outer Space, and mass panics occurred across the country. Cantril noted that "such rare occurrences provide opportunities for the social scientist to study mass behavior...The situation created by the broadcast was one which shows us how the common man reacts in a time of stress and strain [to such a broadcast]." This broadcast influenced all audiences in the population simultaneously, and it is an example of "mass media". Mass media affect huge proportions of the population in the same manner, which is dangerous, as this particular broadcast proved, because these mass media can create mass panics. Thus, though mass media had the benefit of reaching large segments of the population simultaneously, its dangers became obvious with the Welles broadcast.
From the earliest days of 'mass media', the broadcasters began to realize that they would have to define their target audience because trying to appease all audiences is far too unrealistic. Programs that attempt to "have something for everyone" rarely please anyone, so programs became more focused on who they defined as their target audience. Also, defining your target audiences is important because it entices advertisers to support your medium in order to reach the ears and eyes of that audience. An obvious example would be the Wall Street Journal, which is written for professionals in the finance and economic industry. Rarely does one see an advertisement for Toys R Us or for McDonalds in this paper. No, we see ads for the newest BlackBerry on the market, the brand new Lexus coming to dealerships, or ads promoting one law firm or another. Advertisers will chase their target audience with targeted advertisements. Therefor this partitioning of the population into target audiences is both natural and logical.
The niche is not just a biology term, but one essential to advertising as well. Given the tremendous diversity in our society, creating advertising that can satisfy the demands of a majority of the existing niches is a good idea. Niche advertising is just another term for the segmentation of audiences into groups that advertisers can successfully market to. Essentially, niche advertising is the polar opposite of mass media advertising. Whereas mass media were used to carpet bomb a population, niche advertising is much more like a precision strike. Niche advertising was traditionally unprofitable, because the smaller the niche the harder it is to attract advertising support. As our society's technology has improved, we have created more efficient and faster ways to bring information to more and more people, thereby lowering the barriers to niche advertising, and making niches that are smaller and better defined.
With the advent of the Internet, niche advertising has become much easier and much more profitable. Whereas newspapers and television programs needed corporate advertising support to broadcast to millions, establishing a website and filling it with content is much much less expensive. Any average Joe can make a website and fill it with junk without ad revenue. This makes the Internet perfect for satisfying every niche there is, along with the fact that there is an unlimited amount of room on cyberspace. We can do almost anything on the Internet these days, from accessing any genre of music, to watching films online, to accessing newspaper articles from around the world. The Internet has become The Mass Medium!
Chris Anderson, in his article "The Long Tail", discusses how the Internet has created more and more niches by making what used to be "unfindable" content available online. The "Long Tail' refers to the outliers/extremes on any normal parametric curve. If the vast majority (~90%) of an audience pay attention to popular content, then only a small percentage of the population will pay attention to the less popularized films, music, newspapers, comic books, etc. Anderson notes that as the Internet has provided access to obscure and quiet content, "unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service, from DVDs at Netflix to music videos on Yahoo!Launch to songs in the iTunes Music Store..." The Long Tail is all about satisfying niches, however small they may be, because the Internet has made this kind of niche advertising profitable. "As they [the outliers] wander farther from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture.)"
Pandora Online Radio is an example of a program that is designed to satisfy every musical niche there is (the long tail). The website was designed to "learn" what its users look for in musical taste and deliver content that fits that taste. Rob Walker, in a New York Times article, points out what makes Pandora different from other online websites. "Pandora's approach more or less ignores the crowd...The idea is to figure out what you like, not what a market might like." Pandora was designed intentionally to zone in on the users particular tastes, thus creating a seperate niche that is designed only for you! "If you click a lot, the idea is that Pandora's algorithm adjusts, squaring your taste with the [Music] genome's database." Obviously if the website does not have your particular brand of music in its database, then you are out of luck. Other than that though, this website is focused on finding every possible niche mathematically conceivable and delivering music to fit that niche.
Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker Magazine article titled "The Things People Say" demonstrates just how effective the Internet is at creating secluded niche communities. The article discusses how individuals on either extreme of the political spectrum have learned to utilize the internet to find other extremists just like themselves, as well as media content that drives their political insanity. There is literally weeks worth of reading material supporting every political perspective imaginable now available to anyone and everyone over the internet. "Left-leaning readers know, for example, that if they go to the Huffington Post or to AlterNet they will find stories that support their view of the world. Right-leaning readers know to go to the Drudge Report or to Newsmax to find stories that fit their preconceptions. " Whereas a few generations ago these extreme communities would have to be geographically related in order to subsist on the same polarized media, now with the Internet anyone anywhere can access these polarized niches. "And what holds true for the news sites is even more so for the blogosphere, where it's possible to spend hours surfing without ever entering new waters." The Internet has made it possible to exist exclusively within one's own niche, without a deference to the greater world outside.
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