ABSTRACT
In production studies, the question of how producers relate to their audiences has been an important, if implicit, issue in understanding why producers make the decisions that they do. Noteworthy studies of media producers living, working, and making decisions in their native habitats have suggested that “the audience” is a socially constructed idea that workers in the culture industries define as they go about making media content.1 Sometimes these estimations of “the audience” involve uncertain, varying interpretations of who audience members are and what sorts of content they prefer, suggesting that “the audience” may exist more in the imaginations of producers than in actual “reality”.2 In other words, audiences may not actually be getting “what they want” from producers, but content may instead be based merely on the best guesses of audience demand that producers can muster.
