From looking at The Sunday Times newspaper I have chosen different sections from the newspaper to discuss and evaluate the target audience. The first section I looked was the Appointments section in the Sunday Times newspaper you are able to identify the audience straight away with job titles such as Commercial Director, Chief Ombudsman and Group Director, Safety Regulation offering a job salary between £160,000-£180,000 + bonus. The Travel section in the newspaper is advertising a luxury seven day river cruise in Europe with starting prices from £2195 per person. The advertisements uses phrases like 'The worlds greatest journey' and uses maps and images of different location in Europe to interest the audience. An everyday working class family would not be able to afford £2,000 per person, it would usually cost them £2,000 for the whole family to go on holiday abroad for two weeks. The Cars, Gadgets and Adventure sections from the Sunday Times newspaper offers the audience a Buggatti 16C Galibier for only £890,000. It describes the car as a 'Two-tone finish of Bugatti's family car is merely eccentric, the top speed is 240mph'. This shows the readers of this newspaper are middle class with highly paid jobs, because the average family would not be able to afford to buy this type of car. In another section of the newspaper about Home it is advertising huge family homes with 7 bedrooms, 3 receptions, luxury kitchen, 3 bathrooms, double garage and 1 aches of land . The starting prices for these homes start from £650,000 and range to £1,350,000.
When looking at the magazines that come with The Sunday Times one of the magazine is called Style, the main focus on the front page is a female model wearing a short stylish dress that looks very expensive and sophisticated. The images is in black and white with text along side the female model giving the audience a brief description of what the magazine consists of. Along the bottom of the page there is some colourful tabs that highlight some of the topics that are discussed in the magazine such as 'What to wear now' and 'Hot on the high street'. The images that are along side make the magazines target audience to be interested in catwalk and designer fashion. Throughout the magazine there is double page advertisements for top fashion designers such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Chloe, Dolce & Gabbana, Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani, DKNY and many more. This shows that the readers of this magazine are interested in expensive designer clothes, so they must have highly paid jobs or husbands with huge salary's to be able to afford anything that is shown in this magazine. Another magazine that is included in The Sunday Times newspaper is Culture. On the front cover is a picture of Madonna which covers the whole front page. A subtitle is called 'At home with Madonna' so we are able to tell that a topic in this magazine will be an interview with Madonna about her pop career. Looking through the magazine there is an article about Charles Dickens, this shows the audience of this magazine are very educated and are interested such subjects like history. There is lots of text throughout this magazine with a minimum of two images on each page. Also there is advertisements for operas, ballet and musical theaters which are aimed at an middle class audience, with ticket prices between £35-£79 per ticket.
Overall I think that The Sunday Times newspaper is targeting a middle class audience. My reasons for this are because of the topics that are discussed throughout this newspaper are aimed at business men and women with highly paid profiled jobs who are able to spend thousands of pounds on designer clothes, expensive cars, luxury holidays and houses.
