Narrowcasting

Narrowcasting has traditionally been understood as the dissemination of information (usually via Internet, radio, newspaper, or television) to a narrow audience; not to the broader public at-large. Also called niche marketing or target marketing, narrowcasting involves aiming media messages at specific segments of the public defined by values, preferences, demographic attributes, and/or subscription. Narrowcasting is based on the postmodern idea that mass audiences do not exist. While the first uses of the term appeared within the context of subscription radio programs in the late 1940s, the term first entered the common lexicon due to computer scientist and public broadcasting advocate J. C. R. Licklider, who in a 1967 report envisioned

"a multiplicity of television networks aimed at serving the needs of smaller, specialized audiences. 'Here,' stated Licklider, 'I should like to coin the term "narrowcasting," using it to emphasize the rejection or dissolution of the constraints imposed by commitment to a monolithic mass-appeal, broadcast approach.' "

The term "narrowcasting" can also apply to the spread of information to an audience (private or public) which is by nature geographically limited—a group such as office employees, military troops, or conference attendees—and requires a localized dissemination of information from a shared source.

Marketing experts are often interested in narrowcast media as a commercial advertising tool, since access to such content implies exposure to a specific and clearly defined prospective consumer audience. The theory being that, by identifying particular demographics viewing such programmes, advertisers can better target their markets. Pre-recorded television programmes are often broadcast to captive audiences in taxi cabs, buses, elevators and queues (such as at branches of the Post Office in the United Kingdom). For instance, the Cabvision network in London's black cabs shows limited pre-recorded television programmes interspersed with targeted advertising to taxicab passengers.Television has made a transition from broadcasting to narrowcasting which has given advertisers a greater advantage when it comes to directing their messages to a specific demographic audience. For example, if an energy drink company wanted to target 18- to 25-year-old action sport athletes, they may purchase commercial time on a niche network that only narrowcasts mixed martial arts, thus making their message more valuable by marketing to a concentrated audience.

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