Soap opera target audience results analysis

After creating a questionnaire and presenting it to 10 people to complete I obtained a range of results for the questions I asked. I then took these results and analysed them so that I could get a clear understanding of how the audience feel and what they expect from watching a soap opera this will help me when creating our own soap opera as to what the audience will expect to see so that we create a successful soap opera.

From Question 1 - What do you expect in general from this genre?

It was clear that the audience expect to see real life situations and real life people in the show they want to relate to what is happening and they want the programme to be realistic, this shows us that when we create our soap opera we need to follow this we need to create verisimilitude towards our target audience to ensure they can relate to what is happening in the show.

From Question 2 - What settings would you expect to see?
 once again the answers we obtained were similar all the answers we got were stereotypical places in a town or city consisting of such places as pubs and cafes. From these results we now know what the target audience expect to see setting wise in our soap opera the setting will need to be a city or town that consists of stereotypical places such as pubs, clubs, cafes, shops etc this also is to create verisimilitude towards the audience and links in with the audience relating to what they see.

From Question 3 - Which story line would you expect from a soap opera?

The results were once again similar they consisted of murder, death, marriage and affairs this shows us that the story lines of a soap have to be quite hard hitting they need to be big story lines to entice the viewer and once again these story lines are real life situations the audience may not be able to personally relate to these certain situations but verisimilitude will still be created as these storyline happen in every day life.

From Question 4 - What kind of lighting would you expect to see in a soap opera?

The main answer we got was natural, the audience expect to see mainly natural lighting while watching a soap opera however they also said that it depends on the storyline if it is a dark storyline like murder for example then the lighting they would expect to see would be dark but if for example it was a wedding then the lighting would be light so it depends on whether it is a happy or sad storyline as to what lighting will be used the lighting will depend on the emotion we are trying to get our audience to feel.

From Question 5 - What pitch music do you expect to hear?

The answers were similar to the lighting it depends on the storyline as to what music is played if the storyline is upsetting then the music should be low pitch and slow tempo but if the storyline is happy then the music should be high pitch and fast tempo. The music the audience said they expect to hear is the theme tune for the soap every soap needs to have a theme tune.

From Question 6 - What emotions do you expect to feel during a soap opera?

The answers all said the same they all answered that they expect to feel a range of emotions depending on the storyline that is going on so when we create our soap opera we need to make sure that we create the correct atmosphere for the storyline (so this will include the lighting and music) to ensure that the audience is feeling the correct emotion we want them too.

From Question 7 - What is your favourite soap?

We only obtained 4 different answers, Eastenders, Coronation street, Emmerdale and Hollyoaks. The most popular answer was Eastenders so I will conduct more research into this certain soap and try to follow similar story lines to this soap as they are obviously good as this was the most popular soap chosen.

From Question 8 - How old are you?

I did this so that I could have an unbiased and wider understanding of what different audiences expect from soap operas and whether the answers to the questions change depending on the age of the audience but they appeared to stay the same so all ages who watch soap operas expect to see the same.

From Question 9 - Are you male or female?

I asked this question for the same reason as question 8 so that I obtain a wider understanding of what both genders expect from soap operas and whether the answers to the questions change depending on the gender but they appeared to stay the same this shows me that when aiming for a certain target audience gender shouldn't be a difference.

We created this questionnaire so as a group we could get a better understanding of what audiences enjoy and expect to see in their soaps.

Will Howlett & Alex Cockburn