WorldCat, OCLC’s bibliographic database, identifies books and the libraries that hold them. The holdings provide detailed information about the type and number of libraries that have acquired the material. Using this information, it is possible to infer the type of audience for which the material is intended. A quantitative measure, the audience level, is derived from the types of libraries tha...

Kara Lynn Andersen, in her paper "Harry Potter and the Susceptible Child Audience," argues for a rethinking of assumptions of child audiences as passive readers and viewers through an analysis of the Harry Potter phenomenon. Andersen argues that instead of categorizing children as passive and homogenous subjects of analysis, they should instead be incorporated as participants in the discourse a...

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In January 2011, the scheduling plans of Britain’s biggest TV station, BBC1, were leaked to the press. After the recent success of BBC comedies such as Outnumbered (2007-) and My Family (2000-11), BBC1 Controller Danny Cohen apparently told his team of producers that BBC Comedy was becoming ‘too middle class’, and failing in its responsibility to appeal to working class viewers (Gammell, 2011; ...