AUDIENCE THEORY #1 - Stuart Hall's Reception theory

Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-born Cultural studies lecturer at the Open University, who devised the concepts of there being three ways an audience will decode a media text in connection with what has been encoded by its producers.

Three types of reading:

• Preferred Reading: The audience understands and/or agrees with the meaning encoded  by the producer(s)
• Negotiated Reading: The audience partly agrees
• Oppositional Reading: The audience completely  due to reasons of ideology or lack of knowledge

Example:

Only someone who remembers the lyrics of the song Diamond Dogs:

That Halloween Jack is a real cool cat

can follow the preferred reading when reading the name of this YouTube channel.
Even someone who has heard the song and might not be much of a David Bowie fan might not be able to follow the preferred reading. You could also say that the people who understand it and are not Bowie fans, thereby getting no pleasure from realising the reference, only have a negotiated reading

For example I for a long while enjoyed a TV series called The Thick Of It. However I when I first watched as a child it I didn't know about the two main parties in the UK and what they stood for.

Also a more precise example: 

"I've got a to-do list that's longer than a f***ing Leonhard Cohen song"

Only since last year has the name Leonhard Cohen being, so I can follow the preferred reading now when rewatching it.