In some contexts, audience and public are used synonymously.
The word audientia came to Spanish as audience , a concept that has several meanings. The idea of audience can refer to the spectators of a play, a concert or another event; to television viewers; or to the listeners of a radio program.
For example: "Channel 17's newscast continues to lose viewers month after month" , "As soon as the singer went on stage, the audience gave him a standing ovation" , "We want to apologize to the audience since, due to technical problems, we will not be able to broadcast the game live" .
While the terms audience and public can function as synonyms when talking about the people who attend a theatrical performance, the former is usually used with respect to a particular group of people, such as those who have attended a play on a specific date, while the latter can be used to refer to all of an artist's followers: «I didn't notice a very strong connection between the singer and the audience last night» , «This singer has a deep connection with her audience » .
Recipients of a message
In general terms, we refer to the audience as a group formed by all the recipients of a message transmitted through a mass media . Audience measurement, reflected in an index known as rating , is very important in the commercial field: companies pay to advertise their products in the programmes that have the highest ratings. Therefore, knowing the audience data is essential for the media that must find advertisers to support their operations.
This concept has undergone great changes in the last decade, as a result of those experienced by the world of entertainment and the entertainment industry since the arrival of the Internet in our lives. While in the early 90s a large percentage of people watched television for several hours a day, this source of entertainment has been left in the shadows due to the countless possibilities offered by current technology.
The group of recipients of a message transmitted by a mass media is called an audience.
Audience measurement
At that time, various methods were used to measure the audience of a television channel, which today are obsolete and unnecessarily complicated, since the digitalization of the media allows companies to collect data on the number of views of each program, the geographic regions in which the views have been made and the profiles of the users, which can include their age, sex, occupation and even their personal tastes.
On the other hand, almost contradictory to such advances, the loyalty that the public showed a few decades ago to its favorite programs and artists seems to have been diluted in favor of cold and fleeting relationships with content recommended by others, with trends . If maintaining the audience levels of a program was already difficult in the past, today it has become a real odyssey, and for that reason long series are not common.
A type of act and a judicial process
A hearing is also the act that is carried out so that one or more people can present their position on a certain issue to the authorities: "Tomorrow I will have an audience with the mayor and I will ask for his support to resolve the case of my son's murder" , "Due to scheduling problems, the president will not attend the hearing with the victims of the fire: the vice president will attend in his place" , "If you have any concerns, I suggest you request an audience with my secretary" .
In the field of law , finally, the hearing is a process that takes place before a court or a public entity for the resolution of a conflict or for the provision of evidence or testimony in the context of a litigation .