An audience can respond to media products in completely different ways, and a good example of this is when the e4 hit show, Skins, aired a couple of years back, followed by the American version this year. While one was embraced with open arms, benefiting from it's 'controversial' status, the other was on the receiving end of a massive backlash from the media , parents, and the like.
The original Skins tapped into an audience that had originally been neglected on TV for American imports such as One Tree Hill and The O.C. Rather than being insanely-rich white teens, those cast in Skins - who also were, and looked their age - could be the person down the street, someone you knew, or even you. (Heightened for entertainment sake, of course.)
This is what made Skins such a success when it managed to clock up to 1.5 million viewers on the opening episode for the first series. The show found an audience that hadn't been expressed on TV before (especially on British television), and sold them a life style that could, and has been read, as being 'cool'.
The original Skins tapped into an audience that had originally been neglected on TV for American imports such as One Tree Hill and The O.C. Rather than being insanely-rich white teens, those cast in Skins - who also were, and looked their age - could be the person down the street, someone you knew, or even you. (Heightened for entertainment sake, of course.)
This is what made Skins such a success when it managed to clock up to 1.5 million viewers on the opening episode for the first series. The show found an audience that hadn't been expressed on TV before (especially on British television), and sold them a life style that could, and has been read, as being 'cool'.
Take a look at the first teaser trailer for series one. This advertising, to me, screams of - and plugs into - the teeange-cool that, when we're younger, aspire to on some level. The same 'cool' advertising has gone on for the last few years, causing a few complaints across the board. Being a teenager myself, and knowing how complaints of things such as the series 3 teaser trailer introducing the new cast members isn't going to make people my age not watch the show - they'll be more intrigued because of it - thus contributing to this 'cool' factor, that even adults will agree with. This is one key way that Skins has been understood by its young audience who are at an important transitional stage in their life where they are finding out who they are, and are a lot more caring to trends/being cool than adults usually are.
Another point to make would be the fact that, you, the average Skins watcher, can go to open casting calls and attempt to live that life yourself, albeit fictionally, but as a main cast member; not just an extra.
Keeping on the line of Skins transcending off our TV screens and into real life, the 'must be cool' outlook has gone on to be adopted by fans of the show, who have hosted now-notorious 'Skins' parties, not including ones designed for the promotion of the series through those that make the show.
One thing that is interesting about the Skins format, is that, when the American remake aired earlier this year, audiences across the pond 'just didn't get it'.
MTV's own version of Skins was set out to rival the UK's, and hopefully tap into an audience they believed existed in the States, too.
However, the opposite happened when the US Skins aired. It had good viewing figures on its opening, but quickly turned into a travesty, thanks to much negative press. Yes, the show itself was even worse than e4's creation, but, the thing is, there just weren't enough people interested in the American version of the show, among another number of reasons causing it to be cancelled after one season. . It also caused a fair amount of controversy for a short-lived TV programme, too, which clearly contributed to it getting plugged. If advertisers for the show didn't even support it, why should MTV?
The US Skins tried to attract an audience that just wasn't there. And, if it did have an audience, the controversy surrounding the programme didn't help it in anyway, unlike the UK counterpart. The saying 'all publicity is good publicity' may have worked in the UK, but it didn't in the US.
Oddly, the original Skins has done quite well on BBC America, but why? What is the difference between the two audiences?
I think this is one of the reasons why BBCAmerica continue to show the UK Skins, but the US Skins is no more. The American culture are a lot more happy to see another country, another culture, engage in the same acts as those in the US Skins did, but, if it comes down to portraying the lives of their own countries kids, it'll
As a British culture, we are a lot more open to those kind of topics (sex, drugs and violence), whereas Americans are - dare I say - more closeted. Here is a good example of one of the many people angered by Skins US, but more so to campaign against one of their advertisers, Clearasil, featuring on the ad breaks.
Many good points have been raised in this article that I have mentioned here in my own post (about the culture divide), but also the fact that, while UK audiences - which include parents - have come to realise that these kind of things go on with teenagers (they were once that age themselves), the US are almost trying to deny it, and would prefer their kids to be watching the likes of Jersey Shore, or something completely not-based in reality.
So, overall, and in answer to the question "Outline ways in which a media product might be understood by its audience", in this example, there are two main ways that an audience may understand a media product:
1) The UK Skins was understood by its young audience to be the new cool programme that depicted, realistically, the lives of British teenagers. The evidence of its success can be seen through the Skins parties, books, casting calls, and competitions.
2) The US Skins remake wasn't understood by the same audience the original was. Instead of being the realistic portrayal of American teenagers lives, the programme faced serious backlash and, clearly, not enough research went into thinking how US audiences would react to the UK's way of thinking teenagers acted in their day-to-day lives.
The audience the programme reached, instead, were angry media outlets and parents, and not the cool, young, fashionable youth that the UK Skins has attracted.
