science

Virtual audience

Virtual audience is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Virtual audience rather than just read about it. In short: A virtual audience is the use of videoconferencing as a substitute for an in-person studio audience or spectators during a television program or sporting event. A virtual audience allows users to attend a television taping or other event virtually by viewing it via livestreaming, and having audio and video of themselves streamed via webcam to screens at the studio or event site.

Key takeaways

Virtual audience belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Virtual audience to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Virtual audience from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A virtual audience is the use of videoconferencing as a substitute for an in-person studio audience or spectators during a television program or sporting event. A virtual audience allows users to attend a television taping or other event virtually by viewing it via livestreaming, and having audio and video of themselves streamed via webcam to screens at the studio or event site. The practice emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings preventing in-person attendance in the studio or venue.

Implementation Virtual audiences are often implemented using existing videoconferencing platforms such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom, or with proprietary platforms, such as one developed by technology company The Famous Group, and an internal system designed by the BBC. Members of a virtual audience witness the event or the recording of a program via livestreaming. In turn, the audio and video feeds from their webcams can be aggregated by the production staff and incorporated into the program or event, such as the audio mix, and presenting the video from feeds inside the studio or venue as either a mosaic on video walls, or on individual screens.

Notable examples Virtual audiences became prominent on many non-scripted television programs after their return to production, including variety shows, reality competitions, game shows, and talk shows. A virtual audience used for the British variety and game show Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway was designed to allow for two-way interaction with the hosts and the show, handling up to 2,000 participants. Some shows used a mixture of both in-person and virtual audiences; Let's Make a Deal maintained a smaller number of in-person audience members as contestants, but added a virtual audience whose members could also participate in the show. Similarly, The Ellen DeGeneres Show placed virtual audience members on individual screens replacing seats in its audience area, which were later mixed with limited in-person audience members. The Masked Singer used a mixture of stock footage and limited in-person audience members to preserve the illusion of a full audience, but did employ a virtual audience for a "fan vote" feature used as part of the judging process. Virtual audiences were sometimes used during sports and sports-related events, particularly when they were held behind closed doors. During the 2020 NFL draft, a virtual "Inner Circle" of fans from each team was displayed on a television behind Commissioner Roger Goodell (who presented the draft as a virtual event from his home) during the first and second rounds; participants were chosen by each team, and video feeds from each fan were fed using a WebRTC client and a cloud server. The NBA Bubble featured virtual spectators displayed on screens along its courts, which were powered and sponsored by Microsoft Teams. Special guests such as NBA alumni were also present in the lobbies, with viewers given a chance to interact with them during the halftime break. The professional wrestling promotion WWE introduced a closed studio known as the "ThunderDome", which featured a large-scale virtual audience displayed on multiple tiers of screens formed into a curved "grandstand". The ThunderDome stage was used at multiple venues in Florida, and replaced a smaller-scale studio at its WWE Performance Center training facility in Orlando. It was used for WWE's main weekly programs and almost all pay-per-view events from August 2020 through June 2021, before WWE returned to hosting in-person touring events. WWE's third brand, NXT, moved from Full Sail University to the Performance Center in October 2020, adopting a new stage design that similarly incorporated a virtual audience, along with limited in-person attendees. NXT would later reinstate a full-capacity studio audience in June 2021.

Reception The use of an audio-only virtual audience during the 74th British Academy Film Awards faced mixed reception; Deadline Hollywood noted that it "certainly added more atmosphere than BAFTA would've gotten from a silent Royal Albert Hall", but that some viewers and journalists questioned whether the show was actually using a canned laugh track and crowd noise. Multiple writers have described virtual audiences as being dystopian; some writers drew comparisons to "Fifteen Million Merits"—a 2011 episode of the British sci-fi anthology Black Mirror where an in-universe talent show is depicted as having an audience of 3D avatars on a screen.

See also Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on television Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sports

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Virtual audience

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Virtual audience claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Virtual audience before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Virtual audience ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Virtual audience

In research: Virtual audience appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Virtual audience in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Virtual audience is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sports, Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on television, Television terminology, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Virtual audience outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Virtual audience in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Virtual audience means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Virtual audience out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Virtual audience in simple terms?

Why does Virtual audience matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Virtual audience?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Virtual audience.