Audience location for media programs in live linear programming

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing instructions, that when executed, control a computer system to be configured for:

• receiving one or more viewing policies for a media program being offered via live linear programming, the one or more viewing policies being in a format to be applied per user;
• transforming the one or more viewing policies to a linear prioritized list of audience locations and respective actions to perform on a per user basis for presentation via the live linear programming, wherein the linear prioritized list organizes the one or more viewing policies where a higher priority viewing policy is performed when a user falls within multiple audience locations for multiple viewing policies and the linear prioritized list of audience locations organizes audience locations with a higher priority as subsets of audience locations with a lower priority;
• analyzing the actions to determine a base action associated with sending a base content stream for the media program, the base action being lower in priority than other previous actions in the linear prioritized list that do not send the base content stream;
• selecting a content stream audience location associated with the base content stream and one or more previous audience locations associated with the previous actions that have a higher priority in the linear prioritized list than the content stream audience location, the one or more previous audience locations being a subset of the content stream audience location and being higher in priority than the content stream audience location;
• removing the one or more previous audience locations from the content stream audience location to generate a new audience from within the content stream location that is different from audience locations in the linear prioritized list of audience locations;
• and
• storing the new audience location in association with the media program, wherein the new audience location is used to determine whether users may view the media program based on characteristics of the users in place of the one or more viewing policies via the live linear programming.

An apparatus comprising:

• one or more computer processors;
• and
• a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions, that when executed, control the one or more computer processors to be configured for:
• receiving one or more viewing policies for a media program being offered via live linear programming, the one or more viewing policies being in a format to be applied per user;
• transforming the one or more viewing policies to a linear prioritized list of audience locations and respective actions to perform on a per user basis for presentation via the live linear programming, wherein the linear prioritized list organizes the one or more viewing policies where a higher priority viewing policy is performed when a user falls within multiple audience locations for multiple viewing policies and the linear prioritized list of audience locations organizes audience locations with a higher priority as subsets of audience locations with a lower priority;
• analyzing the actions to determine a base action associated with sending a base content stream for the media program, the base action being lower in priority than other previous actions in the linear prioritized list that do not send the base content stream;
• selecting a content stream audience location associated with the base content stream and one or more previous audience locations associated with the previous actions that have a higher priority in the linear prioritized list than the content stream audience location, the one or more previous audience locations being a subset of the content stream audience location and being higher in priority than the content stream audience location;
• removing the one or more previous audience locations from the content stream audience location to generate a new audience location from within the content stream location that is different from audience locations in the linear prioritized list of audience locations;
• and
• storing the new audience location in association with the media program, wherein the new audience location is used to determine whether users may view the media program based on characteristics of the users in place of the one or more viewing policies via the live linear programming.