ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that, in a country such as South Africa, where there may be many choices, but where the means to enact these choices are restricted for the majority of viewers and listeners, an alternative approach is necessary. The ethnographic audience studies cited in paragraph one above contributed to the author's understanding of audiences especially from a cultural studies perspective – even if limited to particular programme/genre choices. The exploratory focus group discussions ran between two and three hours per session. Focus group discussions concentrating specifically on Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) usually commenced about halfway into the focus group meetings, when audience members had already spoken about television in general, their television preferences and viewing habits and their familiarity with different forms of broadcasting in South Africa. The discussions also revealed that a market-only model may be detrimental to the functioning of PSB in the public interest as it serves to marginalise precisely those audiences most dependent on PSB.
