It would be best to start by saying that the media companies focus on a specific audience as aiming at everyone is too broad and it is almost impossible to please every person with the project they create. Pokemon for example is aimed at children around the ages 7 to 14, although it can often appeal to those as old as 25 the company do specific things in order to make it appeal to the younger generation, but in order to know what they should do they have to research the existing popular products to that age group.
They use two different types of research these are called quantitative and qualitative; they are both different and useful to the company. Quantitative is research that it done in quantity, meaning it is very simple but there is a lot of it, the easiest way of doing this is by doing questionnaires, the person answering the question will often have a choice of answers in which they have to pick one, the company will put this together on a table which will easily show them what are the most popular answers. This will most probably be done to find out what are the most popular existing products from which the company might be able to base their project on. Next is qualitative it is quality research, rather than having lots of chosen answers they will have the person write up their own answer in detail so that they can possibly find out not just the most popular product but in detail why it is popular, this can also be done in questionnaires but can also be done through people later testing the prototype. Pokemon as an example have been releasing games for years, they would have to use quantitative data to find out the most well liked aspects of their games but they would have to use qualitative data in order to find out what the audience thinks could be improved and why. Through quantitative data they may have found out that girls are playing the game too and through the number of people that are female they may have then decided to improve the game by allowing you to choose a gender at the beginning of the game, the same could be said for the change in age of the character. But only through the qualitative data will they be able to really make a lot of difference to the games, examples of this could be the change in the fighting graphics, people may have specified that they wanted the fighting pokemon to do more than just stand there, which they do in the earlier games but now in the newly released games they do small things like close their eyes when they have been put to sleep and have more detail to the attacks, only through the qualitative data can the most difference be made to the product.
Next would be best to give you some information on pokemon. Firstly Pokemon is aimed at the younger generation, obviously it was a major hit in Japan, which is hardly a surprise as anime originated from there and pokemon is aimed in that style. I believe this was why they chose to use the anime style of animation, because they were already aware of how popular anime is with out doing the research. Due to the insane amount of pokemon stuff out there it is almost impossible to find out anything to do with how they first started off and the research they did into it. The man who created Pokemon is called Satoshi Tajiri, he was interested in insect collecting and when he saw the game boy decided that he was going to make it possible for the consoles to be linked. This was how he came up with the idea of for pokemon, this idea was pitched to Nintendo. As far as my research will tell me there was hardly an research done into the target audience and their response, but rather they went along with the idea because he had already been involved with the popular legend of Zelda game. The game took six years to make and game freak, the magazine that was made by Tajiri went bankrupt. Even this said he never gave up on the idea.
I believe the thing that makes it seem like he did no research in to the game was because by the time it had been completed there was no way to advertise it as the media believed that the game boy was no longer a popular console. Nintendo released the game and no one expected it to do very well but in the end Nintendo found it among its top franchises people were interested in getting the hidden pokemon Mew and trading with each other.
I think Pokemon is pretty clear who it is aimed at as it's is a very bright and colourful animation along with none serious story lines. The one main thing I found is that when a Pokemon loses a battle they "Faint" instead of "Die" this would make no difference to the older audiences but was obviously made this way to be more child friendly.
However
Most other media companies take care to look in to their target audience to make sure that their product is giving them the things that they want. An example of this is the recent rise in Vampire and Supernatural romance books on sale for teenagers, this all started because of the interest taken into twilight so now there are several hundred books based on this idea. Sometimes companies have to take the risk and introduce something new, Pokemon is an example of this as the idea to link up the game boy consoles was an original idea. Media companies will almost always do as much research in to the product as possible in order to make sure that they can sell it and make lots of money from it, without doing this they risk the possibility of losing money to make it. They have several ways of doing this research, the first they would do would probably be a series of questionnaires in order to find out what most people are interested in this will give them an idea of the type of product they should make or what they should include in it, these will be aimed at the audience they intend to sell to. Once they have decided on it and created a few prototypes of the product they will bring in testers in order to use it, this way they will find out what they think will make the product better and what things they had problems with. The people will often be the type of person that they are aiming at an example of this is if pokemon were to have done this they wouldn't have made any progress by using a group of people over the age of 40 as the game was aimed at a much younger age. With this said they may still try out people that the project isn't aimed at in order to see if they enjoy it and what could be added to it to also attract the attention of other groups.
Once they know one thing is popular they might look in to making something similar but creating it so that it aims at a larger audience, a good example of this is the way that pokemon have changed their characters, they are now slightly older and there are both a boy and girl, this means that they are trying to introduce the older generation to the games and allow girls the possibility of being included. This is one way the marketing company can grow their markets, by aiming at more people but they is also the possibility of creating different items created based on one thing, these will be aimed at the same audience but will provide them with something more to spend their money on. Pokemon have changed their games for a wider audience but have also developed a lot of franchise. They have cards, cosplays, anime, manga, DS consoles, board games etc. This is the same for many other popular TV programmes, the idea can be developed in to a multitude of different new things that will once again get the company producing it. All the above tend to be done by companies because the whole idea of them producing products is to make money and they are willing to do whatever it takes to make as much money from it as they can, like run an anime on it for 700 episodes, this is the same for most of the popular anime or games, since it's bringing in money they never want to stop showing it (or bringing out new ones) as the other products will also go down in popularity if they stop which will lower the amount of money they get from it.
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