captive audience

captive audience

1. An audience (of a speech, performance, lecture, etc.) that is prevented from leaving and is therefore obligated to listen. Our boss made attendance at the panel discussion mandatory, thus ensuring a captive audience.
2. An audience that is enraptured by and gives the entirety of its attention to a speaker or performance. The key to maintaining a captive audience is to make sure your speech appeals to everyone present.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

captive audience

Listeners or onlookers who have no choice but to attend. For example, It's a required course and, knowing he has a captive audience, the professor rambles on endlessly . This expression, first recorded in 1902, uses captive in the sense of "unable to escape."
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.

captive audience

An audience that cannot escape a particular presentation—a speech, play, sermon, or the like. For example, “The preacher always makes his sermon twice as long on big holidays—he knows he’s got a captive audience.” This phrase originated in the United States about 1900.
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • take attendance
  • listen up
  • I’m listening
  • I'm listening
  • listen
  • dumbshit
  • eavesdrop
  • eavesdrop on
  • eavesdrop on (someone or something)
  • bums on seats
References in periodicals archive
"Captive Audience: On Love and Reality TV," by Lucas Mann, Vintage, 272 pages
Book says stop feeling embarrassed by how much you love reality TV
And the Supreme Court has found that even student-initiated prayers at school events are coercive to a captive audience and therefore unconstitutional.
Kentucky governor signs law permitting religion, potential discrimination in schools
His captive audience were more than his captive audience were more than happy to accept an invite to "take things up a notch" especially when the clock was wound back to 2010 and the chart topper's breakthrough hit Won't Go Quietly and more recent single Kids Again, with its 'oh oh ohs' echoing around the building.
Fine Example draws crowds; SIMON DUKE reviews Example at the O2 Academy in Newcastle
Susan Crawford, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013, 360 pp., $19.99 (hardcover).
Susan Crawford, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age
Irwin said: "When I was a kid, we had four TV channels and a captive audience.
Life can be a real drama for teens
Despite being offered as a freebie, one CTO employee welcomed the urinal advert, suggesting that the "captive audience" might have worked in Cyprus' favour.
Peeved over CTO's ad in club toilet
As the general public we might be a captive audience, but we are a bitter and resentful captive audience.
Airport offers such a poor 'welcome to Birmingham' viewpoint
That old slogan 'it pays to advertise' sprang to mind when Captive Audience made a successful first appearance for rising star Rebecca Curtis in the maiden hurdle and impressed Geraghty to such an extent that he suggested a challenge at the Punchestown festival.
National Trust gives Henderson record ending to a special week; FFOS LAS
Cruise liners have a captive audience and they play on this in two ways.
PENultimate
The aim is clear - make more money from a captive audience.
Save our tea; RecordView
CAPTIVE AUDIENCE: Bifo the sealion takes a closer look at poet Kevin McCann with keeper Ellie Sherlock Picture: GEOFF ROBERTS; TOGETHER: Bifo with Kevin and Ellie
Poetry in motion for sealion
"The idea is based on the concept that there is no more captive audience than a guy standing at a urinal," he says.
Talking Johns
-- SignStorey, Inc., a provider of digital media networks to the grocery industry, last week acquired Newton, N.J.-based Captive Audience, LLC, which provides digital media services in the deli departments of ShopRite and Big Y stores in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey.
SignStorey Gains Captive Audience of More Retailers
Brian Banaszynski, vice president of Advance Realty Group, added, "Through the program, retailers have multiple sales opportunities before, during and after stadium events to a captive audience coming through and departing from Harrison MetroCentre and Red Bull Park.
Branding options up for grabs at $1b stadium and MetroCentre