Relationship Between the Media Products, Audience and Money

Money is the largest deciding factor between media products and their audiences. Without money, media products would cease to exist as the whole point of media is to gain a profit by making money off their audience. Advertisement is the main form of income for media products and there is a direct relationship between advertisers and the audience. The larger the audience, the more advertisers are willing to spend to place their advertisement there. This is due to the fact that advertisers will want to place their advertisements where the largest possible audience will see their products and buy them. If the audience is not being attracted, advertisers will also lose interest as there is no point in spending money on an advertisement that no one will see. To make sure this does not happen, media products carry out investigations in order to ensure advertisers that the desired audience is being attracted. If this is not the case, the media product suffers and is pulled off air.

Advertisers do not want to be associated with negative publicity fearing that the audience will relate the negativity to the product. This has resulted in added pressure on media products to please the advertisers and what they say/do is often scrutinized as, if the advertisers are insulted/displeased, the media product will suffer financially without sponsorship. An example of this is when Marc Ellis said "Sweating like a rapist" on Sports Café leading to an outbreak of outrage from viewers and Marc Ellis being denounced by organisations including Rape Crisis.

Advertisers want to place their advertisements during shows with the highest ratings such as "Desperate Housewives", "Grey's Anatomy" and "Prison Break" as they know that the audience is watching and will thus see their product. This is what leads to most cancellation of shows. Television shows that cannot bring in enough ratings are often cancelled due to lack of audience and thus lack of advertisers. Shows like