ABSTRACT
Commercial television produces audiences not programmes. Advertisers, in purchasing a few seconds of television time, are actually buying viewers by the thousand. The price they pay is determined by the number of people who can be expected to be watching when their advert is shown. Hence advertisers regard programmes merely as the means by which audiences are delivered to them. The sequence of programmes in any evening, week, or season reflects the quest of commercial customers to get the largest or most appropriate public they can. ‘The spot is the packaging,’ wrote a market researcher in Advertising Quarterly, ‘the product inside the package is an audience.’ These are the realities which help to determine what kinds of programmes are made, when they are shown, and who sees them.
