Task 1: Define the Target Audience for The Sun and The Times

The Times Newspaper
The Times has one of the largest readerships when it comes to newspapers from across the UK, this is approximately 1,128,000 people. The audience read the newspaper on different platforms ranging from PC and Hard copies, those who are more likely to read on a electronic device would be considered younger than those who may buy a hard copy. Overall The Times has 37,000 people who read their newspaper via their electronic devices, whereas they have 1,093,000 people who read it via the hard copy of the newspaper, this is in relation to the main audience being at the age of 65 or older. If we looked at the social demographic of 
The Times newspaper we can clearly see that they target those in the AB section, who are also known as upper-middle class. The example of The Times on the right hand side shows the different types of codes and conventions that The Times newspaper follows. For example The masthead is at the top of the page, it is bold black writing so that it stands out and is easily recognizable to the target audience. The font of the masthead also allows us to identify the readership of The Times because it is a very simple font which to me connotes the meaning of the people that read this newspaper are focused mainly on the stories and not whether it looks pretty and colorful. This to me proves The Times is a formal newspaper. 

From this front page we can clearly see that the readership are likely to have an interest in politics and international politics. This is because they have used an image of Hilary Clinton who is an American politician. This to me again proves that those who read The Times are focused mainly on the important issues surrounding this world rather than those who read The Sun newspaper who prefer the more gossipy type of articles. The Times front page uses a lot of text which to me again says that those reading it do not want to just see photos they want to read the full details of what is going on and be as informed as they can be, this to me says that the higher class citizens are most likely to read this type of newspaper.

The Sun Newspaper
The Sun has a much larger readership than the times of approximately 4,461,000 people. The Sun produces around 1,696,685 papers and then these produce a readership of around 4,315,000 people. The Sun has a much smaller readership online than The Times newspaper this number is around 160,000. The social Demographic of the Sun's readership is DE which are typically lower class and retired people. They target this audience because it works for them and has done for a number of years, I also believe they target this audience because it is very big audience so lowers the risk of failure.


The image to the right gives us an example of The Sun's front cover. It also allows us to identify the codes and conventions The Sun uses. For example if we look at the masthead like we did with The Times we can see that it is a lot simpler and has more color to it. The red background allows us to identify The Sun as a tabloid newspaper which means it's articles are based on soft news which differs to that of The Times. 

The front cover is very different to that of The Times as it is mainly dominated by images, and has very little text. This is because the audience who read The Sun like this and are used to it, This differs to that of The Times as the front cover of that newspaper was mainly dominated by text. The Sun use mainly pictures as the audience they are targeting like to understand a story purely by the pictures that have been used with a small bit of text to give some detail.


Overall we can tell that The Sun has a much larger readership than The Times and this is proven in the figures I have provided. One reason this might be the case is because The Sun is a newspaper that is more interested in the lives of celebrities and there gossip rather than the actual world events. This means they will have a larger audience because people enjoy being nosy and finding out about what they're most loved celebrities have been up too. This means there is also a much larger audience for them to target rather than The Times which shows why the readership is much greater.