We learnt about the scheduling in documentaries on many TV channels. This is so it gives us a good idea as to we when could schedule our documentary. The types of scheduling can be found below:
Inheritance - This is when the channel controllers air a documentary on after a popular show such as Coronation Street - in doing so, people may feel the need to leave their television on so that the documentary can 'inherit' the audience of the more popular show.
Pre Echo - Works in the opposite way to inheritance; a documentary could be put on before a popular show such as Coronation Street. The audience waiting to watch Coronation Street may turn the channel on early so to not miss the start of Coronation Street, and in doing so may end up watching part of or the entire documentary.
Hammocking - A sort of combination of inheritance and pre echo, where a documentary can be sandwiched in between two popular programmes on a channel and may gain extra viewers via both or either of inheritance and pre echo, and also viewers who leave the channel on after the first show as they wish to watch the second popular programme.
We also were familiarised with the types of documentary featured on different British television channels.
BBC 1 - These documentaries tend to be aimed at families.
BBC 2 - These are often the most educational documentaries out of the five main channels. However, these a sometimes more explicit and less suitable for children than the documentaries shown on BBC1.
ITV1 - The friendliest of the five channels. They are less serious documentaries than the ones aired on BBC1 and try to appeal to all audiences. ITV has shown serious documentaries in the past, including the controversial 2007 film 'Malcolm and Barbara Lover's Farewell' by Paul Watson. This documentary caused a scandal regarding the false death of Alzheimer's patient Malcolm Pointon, who actually died three days after his "death scene". Despite this, the film did raise awareness for Alzheimer's which some would argue was original goal of the documentary. This documentary was shown after 9pm to avoid upsetting any children.
Channel 4 - Many of Channel 4's documentaries are aimed at students and younger people. Often, they will have some comedy elements to them, such as in 'My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding'.
Channel 5 - These documentaries are aimed at families, although Channel 5 as a whole is thought to not differentiate it's programs enough from BBC1 and therefore does not gain as much of a large audience.
After some discussion, we came to the decision that our documentary would be called 'Tastes Like Teen Spirit' and that we wanted our target audience to be mostly students and drawing some attention from adults. The title of our documentary is a take on the world-famous Nirvana song 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. We felt that this would be a good title as it will appeal to our target audience who will most likely be aware of the song and how the title is a play on words. We decided that it would be best for our documentary to be shown on Channel 4 on a Thursday at 8pm. This would Hammock our documentary in between the seven o'clock Channel 4 news (who are likely to have slightly more mature viewers) and Educating Essex, a documentary that is likely to be aired after ours. We decided that 8pm would be a good time to broadcast our documentary as this is a time when we believe that a large number of young people would be watching television. Many students are busy with education or work during the day time. We felt that Thursday would be a the best day because at the weekend, a lot of our target audience enjoy socialising in the evenings by visiting clubs or bars.
|
