T.V Scheduling Research

Scheduling

We looked through and commented on a three day schedule given to use including all of the terrestrial channels and then attempted an answer questions given to us. This is what we found:

The schedule for each day can be broken down into clear segments. How would you categorise these segments?

Breakfast
Daytime
Evening – Peak time – Mass Audience
Post water shed

Who are the target audience for these Segments?

Breakfast - Differs according to channel
Daytime – House wife’s, elderly, students and unemployed
Evening – Families
Post Water She – Adults

What would you say are the most popular genres on television?

Soaps
Game Shows
Sit-coms
Reality TV
Drama’s (Police Drama mainly)
Cookery Programmes

Who is the target audience of each terrestrial channel? Give examples to support your views.

Channel 1- Everyone (We pay for this channel through license fee)
Channel 2- Caters for minority audiences
Channel 3 – Everyone (same as channel 1)
Channel 4 – Produces programmes for minority audiences

Roughly, what percentage of each channel’s schedules is taken up with repeats?

BBC1 – 5%
BBC2 – 30%
ITV1 – 5%
C4 – 30%
C5 – 30%
BBC1 and ITV1 do not have many repeated programmes on there channel, this is down to money. Channel 2 and 4 don’t have the money of BB1 or ITV and therefore can not afford to make as many programmes themselves. It is cheaper for the company to simple buy a programme than it is to make one.

Which channels have more imported programmes in their schedules? Why?

Channel 5 - Again this is a money issue, channel five have to look for the cheaper solution which is importing a programme from a different country.

What do you understand by the term ‘the watershed’ and where does this occur in the schedules?

I take this to be the adult’s only time of telly, usually starting around 9 o clock. After 9 o clock young children should not be watching.


3 Main Types of TV Scheduling

Today in class we continued to look in more detail at scheduling. We talked of the three main types of scheduling and each types pro’s and con’s.

Inheritance – Scheduling a programme immediately after a popular programme in the hope it will ‘inherit’ some of its audience.

Pr-Echo – Scheduling a programme before a popular programme. The hope is that the audience for the popular programme will tune in early before it starts and accidently catch’s the end of the new programme, which may brag there attention and encourage them to watch the whole programme next time.

Hammoking – Scheduling a programme between to popular programmes so it benefits from both inheritance scheduling and pre-echo scheduling.

On the surface inheritance would make appear to make more sense as the viewers are already hooked and on the channel. However now a lot of the programmes do not start at the time scheduled in newspapers or magazines, this is not accidental. It is entirely deliberate,, the channel is aware of a programme starting at a certain time and till tune in, therefore they put a trailer on for a new programme at this time and start the programme a little later.

Channel Loyalty - 20-30 years ago an audience would tent to put on a channel and then stick with that channel all night. At one time Channel one was viewed as sophistication and somewhat educational and channel three perhaps more trashy and wild. Each channel would have there loyal viewers who tunes in every night and did not turn over.