Increased competition among the media
for advertising dollars was a fourth contributor
to the growth of research. Most media
managers are now sophisticated and use
long-range plans, management by objectives,
and an increasing dependency on data to
support the decisions they make. Even program
producers seek relevant research data,
a task usually assigned to the creative side of
program development. In addition, the mass
media now focus on audience fragmentation,
which means that the mass of people is
divided into small groups, or niches (technically
referred to as the “demassification” of
the mass media). Researchers need information
about these smaller groups of people