Here is an extract from a sign at UBD, promoting some function. Note the use of audience to refer (presumably) to a single person. In standard English, it would be more normal to offer the prize to 'a member of the audience'. (If the $10 card is really to be shared among the whole audience, that will mean each person will not be getting very much!)
At first sight, this seems to reflect a shift in the use of count/noncount nouns that is common in a range of New Englishes around the world. For example, it is very common to find references to furnitures, luggages, informations and researches, even though all these nouns are regarded as noncount in standard English, so it is not possible to pluralise them.However, audience is actually different, as it is always a count noun. In fact, in standard English it is possible to compare a good audience tonight with a less responsive audience on a previous evening. It is just that audience is a collective noun, referring to all the people, not just to individuals.
In many ways, therefore, audience is a bit like alphabet, which is also a count noun that (in standard usage) refers to a complete system of writing. One can say, for example, that Malay is represented by two different alphabets: the Roman alphabet and the Arabic-based Jawi script. However, in Brunei and Singapore one often sees alphabet used as a synonym for letter, so people might say that the word cat "has three alphabets", even though this does not make sense in standard usage.
It is not clear if the use of audience and alphabet to refer to individual entities rather than the collective whole will eventually become the norm in this part of the world.
