Journalism Now Article - The Sun's target audience

The Sun newspaper, originally a struggling broadsheet, was taken over by Rupert Murdoch in 1969, turning it into the format of a tabloid. The Sun’s main demographic is the middle/working class, therefore relating to the C2DE social class categories. Ultimately, the content of the newspaper portrays this. However, The Sun also has a wider demographic, including ABC1 men and women. As shown on The Sun’s rate card 2,795 people of the ABC1 demographic read The Sun on a daily basis.

The C2DE social groups –which are The Sun’s main target audience- can be stated to be mainly interested in television and celebrity news-stories; therefore The Sun connects with their target audience by including stories such as this. Generally, The Sun’s readership, when regarding gender, can be said to be both male and female. This is proven through the variety of celebrity and fashion stories, which would target middle/lower class women. Yet there is also a large sport section, without forgetting the images of page 3, which target the male demographic.

Advertisements throughout The Sun often reflect the target audience. An example of this is whole page advertisements for supermarket chains such as Lidl. Ultimately, by looking at prices shown in the advertisement, Lidl can be seen as much cheaper than higher chains such as Marks and Spencer’s, therefore portraying The Sun’s audience even further. As stated on The Sun’s readership card, it costs a total of £55,502 a day for an advertisement to be included in The Sun. This can relate to the 2,725,323 copies of The Sun sold between August – October this year. In contrast, The Guardian, which is said to have an audience of the ABC1 adults, sold a total of 1,198,000 copies between January – June. This can portray the way that although The Sun has a readership of a lower social class, it’s readership levels are nearly double that of The Guardian, and it also costs far more to include an advertisement in The Sun due to the difference in readership levels.

It can be said that due to new forms of media occurring throughout the past 10 years, some newspapers are finding it difficult to keep up. However, The Sun has begun to use new forms of media such as Iphone applications where you can download the newspaper in the ‘newsstand’ or download The Sun’s: Bizarre section as a separate application.  Relating to this, at the bottom of the Lidl advertisement there is a banner for Facebook saying ‘See you on Facebook!’ This instantly relates to The Sun’s audience, which are in the age brackets of 18-45, as stated on The Sun’s readership profile online. Many of these readers will have an account on Facebook and use it regularly, therefore enabling both The Sun and Lidl to target their audiences in a different way, which will interest their main demographic.

To conclude, The Sun’s success can be proven through its rate card, which states that although its main demographic is that of the C2DE social economic groups, it’s readership demographic also spreads widely to the ABC1 categories.