The Uses And Gratifications Of Chinese Audience As Viewers Of American Tv Series

The Uses and Gratifications Approach changes the perspective of Mass Communication research from “what media do to people” to “what people do with media”. With the development of Internet which shows the features of “Interactivity”,“Demassification” and “Asynchroneity”, the audience’s initiative position is more significant and attracts more scholars’ concern. The spread of American TV series in China just benefits from such rapid development of the Internet. And with their excellent content, American TV series draw a lot attention of the loyal Chinese audience. So far, there have been lots of researches on uses and gratifications of different kinds of media. This paper intends to introduce this classic theory into the research on Chinese audience’s watching American TV series. For what kind of motivations or needs do Chinese audience choose to watch American TV drama? And do the watching behavior really meet these needs? How the gratification sought and gratification obtained affect audience’s further watching behavior? This paper based on the theory of Uses and Gratification, chooses the hit TV drama <Breaking Bad>as case, aims to analysis Chinese audience’s gratification sought from watching American TV series, also the gratification obtained from watching <Breaking Bad>,and their influence on further TV viewing behavior. The research shows that the demand for entertainment, cognition, sociability are the main motivations that audience watching American TV series. And the demand for entertainment is the biggest demand, because of the American TV drama’s broad range of topics, elaborate plots and excellent performing. Data statistics show that the gratification that <Breaking Bad> provides are higher than the gratification audience plan to get, so the comparative study between gratification sought and gratification obtained can be an approach to evaluate <Breaking Bad>.Besides, gratification sought and gratification obtained will future affect audience’s part of watching behavior.