ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about audience imagery—;;that is, potentially influential images, entertained by others, of what the audience for television programming may be like. It suggest that there was a potential in new television marketplace developments. Most empirical research into mass media communicators' audience images has been microscopic - more productive of close-ups than panoramas. Not necessarily defined by particular social ties or tastes, this is someone who is disposed to follow media materials actively, to think about their possible meanings and significance, and to value the resulting deepening or broadening of experience. The proliferation of channels has laid the foundations for this, enabling new entrepreneurs to challenge the hitherto established providers of products for the large heterogeneous mass audiences by offering the differentiated programming designed to appeal to targeted audiences.
