The phrase "divide the audience" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe a situation in which the people in a large group were divided into smaller, more manageable groups. For example, "The presenter asked us to divide the audience into three smaller groups for a better discussion."
Maria Dafneros, the only female performer in the piece, recalls: "We looked seriously at what we could do to divide the audience, what would be that one step too far.
When Colin Meloy, the band's leader, sought to divide the audience down the middle, an aisle appeared where fans had been packed shoulder to shoulder, and they sang "La-di-da-di-da".
When they seriously begin to let rip on Prodigal Son and Traveller, they may divide the audience, but the potential to create an even bigger din with a proper band kicking down doors is seriously enticing.
Surely no one with a measurable I.Q. is still against that, although, in fact, you can still hear folks with but 10 watts upstairs say, "Why put ideas in kids' heads?" My wondering about whether more sex in school, in my part of The Old Days, would have made me a better person seemed to divide the audience.
The stars who emerged in the 1960s and early '70s — before cable television, home video and the Internet began to divide the audience into discrete demographic groups — will likely be the last generation to make it into coothood with their popularity more or less intact: Clint Eastwood (now 77), Jack Nicholson (70), Al Pacino (67).
What strikes me is just how easily the eerie and futuristic sounds divide the audience.
To avoid a crush of people at the signing table, the staff divided the audience into several groups by letter.
And such stories draw a line in the sand, dividing the audience between those who accept such categories as legitimate exceptions or justifications and those who don't.
