captive audience
Noun
Meaning
captive audience (plural captive audiences)
A person or people who are unable to leave a place or situation and are thus forced to listen to or watch something.
Passengers on the plane are a captive audience.
Register racks at checkout stands offer manufacturers a captive audience for their products in the retailer's store.
Examples
Advertising in the past has been predicated on a mass market and a captive audience.
When I was nine, we'd take a bus to the seaside. Coming back, we'd take turns entertaining, singing songs and the like. I tried some stand-up comedy. I had a captive audience in that bus. Then I realized I wanted to do more than that.
Ever since I gave up therapy, it's my only time with a captive audience.
There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience.
Not only is life under quarantine surprisingly evocative of their setting, the fictitious town of Mercer, Ohio, but they have just what every creator of sparse, slow sci-fi craves: a captive audience.
However, online retailers such as Lazada now find themselves in a unique position, with a captive audience of locked-down consumers.