Fans of award-winning movies are far more likely to be heavy print consumers and tend to be older, educated, higher income home-owners, new research finds.
A Roy Morgan study of people who watched the past five Academy Award for Best Picture winners found they were more likely to read at least seven newspapers or five magazines a week and less likely to consume three or more hours of TV or radio.
Over the past five years, an average of 19 per cent of Australians are classified as heavy newspaper readers, 21 per cent as heavy magazine readers, 30 per cent heavy commercial TV viewers and 16 per cent are heavy commercial radio listeners.
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People who saw The Artist at the cinema were the most likely to be heavy newspaper readers (40 per cent) but the least likely to consume a lot of commercial TV (19 per cent) or radio (12 per cent).
Watchers of The Hurt Locker were the most likely to be heavy magazine readers (37 per cent) with business, financial and airline being the most preferred for the group.
The most-watched film of the five was The King’s Speech with 2.5 million saying they had seen it and about a third of them were heavy readers of newspapers and magazines.
Audiences of last year’s winner 12 Years a Slave were the least likely to read seven or more papers a week (22 per cent), but instead were more likely to read five or more magazines (28 per cent).
Argo had the largest proportion of audience listening to three or more hours of commercial radio a day (15 per cent), just slightly below the national average.
These last two winners also had a larger share of audiences watching a heavy amount of commercial television (27 per cent) than did any of the previous three.
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Roy Morgan general manager Tim Martin says the results mean awards season is a perfect time for advertisers to use multi-channel media campaigns combining print with other mediums.
“The diversification works so well because the audiences enjoying those in the running for Best Picture are also so attractive as consumers,” he says.
“Best Picture Oscar nominations certainly help drive audiences to the cinema—and those going to see such critically acclaimed movies are more likely to be older, educated, higher income home-owners.”
The research follows a previous Roy Morgan study that found big readers of newspapers, magazines and direct mail are more likely to have a university degree than the average Australian, earn at least $5000 a year more, and are more likely to be in the top 20 per cent of the socio-economic scale.
They are also 4-12 per cent more likely to be big spenders (in the top third of the population in terms of their discretionary expenditure), slightly more willing to try different products (except, unsurprisingly, newspaper readers), and to trust print as a good source of financial advice.
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