Media Studies: October 2011

Part 1 : RAJAB and BARB

Target Audience

TASK 1:

RAJAR, which stands for Radio Joint Audience Research Limited, was started in 1992 and is owned by CRCA (Commercial Radio Companies Association). This company provides an official service to the radio industry measuring radio audiences in the UK. There are currently approximately 310 individual stations on the survey including 55 BBC stations and results are published every quarter. This company is also partly owned by the BBC and the Radio Centre, on behalf of the commercial sector making it a deadlock company, which means that they need both board parties to agree to decisions which will affect the company. The UK radio map is very complex, so RAJAR interviews around 11,000 adults, aged over 15, and 4,000 children between the ages of 4 -14 over 50 weeks. The survey operates as a sweep, not a panel, which means that participants are asked to participate for one week. They complete a diary which shows the stations they have listened to for a minimum of 5 minutes.

BARB (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board) is the organisation responsible for providing the official measurement of UK television audiences. BARB is a private company and they are not owned by a large corporation. Their main media producer is television and they work for BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channels 4 and 5. The main purpose of both of these companies is to target demographic groups within audiences and then to find out as much relevant and useful information about them as possible. BARB is responsible for providing estimates of the number of people watching television. This includes which channels and programmes are being watched, when they are watched and the type of people who are viewing at any one time. Viewing data is collected second-by-second and delivered on a minute-by-minute basis for channels received within the UK. Viewing estimates are obtained from a panel of television owning private homes representing the viewing behaviour of the 26 million TV households within the UK. The panel is selected to be representative of each ITV and BBC region, with pre-determined sample sizes. Each home represents, on average, about 5,000 of the UK population.

These two agency companies are non-profitable companies and they are funded by some of the big companies such as the BBC, Channel 4, ITV1 and Channel, 5 on a contract basis. This works well for both the agency companies and their clients. The large media companies get access to useful information and research that helps them to produce good television programmes and the research agencies, by providing an invaluable service/offering to these big companies, are able to ensure that they get the funding they require. Research information is so important when it comes to producing media products, because of the huge financial risks involved. For example, if a programme is a major ‘flop’, then this may cause a large financial loss, job redundancies and may even damage the company’s reputation for producing first class programmes.

These research agencies collect audience figures and facts to help increase viewing figures, because this information can help the programmes’ media producers to understand and target specific groups of people by such things as age, gender, interests and even by background. Also, they are able to understand and control such things as when the programme should be shown, at what time, on what day and even for how long. This all helps to increase the potential viewing figures as well as encourage viewer loyalty, channel viewing time and even advertising time and revenues. It is very beneficial for media producers as it can help them reduce revenue losses and can increase profits for their programmes, which is increasingly important today especially for the BBC, who are facing large cuts in license fees and all media companies that are facing increased competition and tighter budgets.

It is interesting to compare the radio and television agencies, such as BARB and RAJAR, to a different media research agency that works in a different sector, such as NMA, which is a newspaper research agency. NMA deals with the majority of the UK based newspapers, such as The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail as well as many other UK newspapers. For example, the TV and Radio research agencies look to provide quantitative research, because it is more relevant to get general viewing statistics for their shows, rather than getting detailed and specific information. However, NMA tend to carry out qualitative research, because the information would provide them with more detail on ideas and opinions on the newspaper and they can then use this information to make advertising more effective in these particular newspapers.

Increased advertising created by higher viewing figures is incredibly important for media companies. An example of this is ITV who have had a 45% rise in profits, partly due to programmes like the X Factor show, which is populist programme shown at key viewing times. The additional money raised by these types of shows has allowed them to invest £25 million in online services, which allows them to compete in this new space. Media Producers also can receive critical acclaim for creating new and different populist television that the information from the research agencies helps to make. In the past, TV Awards have honoured the producers of populist programmes such as Big Brother, Who wants to be a Millionaire and Ground Force.

The possible downside to media producers and to media companies is that they are constantly under pressure to produce populist television and radio, rather than quality programmes that may not always appeal to the mainstream. The research agencies viewing figures can push media companies to produce more and more programmes of the same type, rather than producing a rich variety of programmes that could ultimately offer more to the consumer in terms of education and real insight into the world we live in.

Consumers can benefit from the research agencies, because it insures that media producers are developing and creating relevant programmes for their audience. It also makes the programmes that are more popular and gets the target audience ‘spot on’ for each programme i.e. the right programmes for the right people at the right time.
However, the downside is that the consumer will get more and more of the same type of television and radio, with very little real choice and variety. The consumer is left with just mass media, rather than media that is more intelligent and challenging for them, with a focus on improving and contributing to society. Examples include TV programs about art, or history and recordings of classical and jazz music. Populist media provides entertainment that satisfies consumer "baser" cravings of the consumer culture, such as reality shows, TV, pop music and pornography, but fundamentally could be seen to let the consumer down and could be partly to blame for the consumerist “baser” culture we are seeing in Britain today.

TASK 2:

The best way of finding out quantitative and qualitative research is to hand out questionnaires with relevant questions. This should provide you with valuable information which you can then use to help produce the final product. This is the main source of research which all companies and research agencies have to do. Here is my own example of a questionnaire:

Broadcaster’s audience research board

TV Programme Content Schedule

Age:

8-16 [ ] 17-24 [ ] 25-32 [ ] 33-40 [ ] 41-48 [ ] 49+[ ]

Gender: Male [ ] Female [ ]

What type of programme do you like to watch in the evening?

Soaps [ ] Documentary [ ] Film [ ]

What are your favourite programmes on at the moment?

________________________________________________

What new types of programmes would you like to see on television?

________________________________________________________

What is the worst thing about the programmes you watch on television?

_______________________________________________

What is the best thing about the programmes you watch on television?

_____________________________________________________

How long do you like your SOAP’s to be?

30 mins [ ] 45 mins [ ] 60 mins [ ] 90 mins [ ]

How long do you want your Documentaries to be?

30 mins [ ] 45 mins [ ] 60 mins [ ] 90 mins [ ]

Signature

Thank you for Participating

References:

www.barb.co.uk

www.rajar.co.uk

http://www.nmauk.co.uk/nma/do/live/aboutTheNma;jsessionid=C4539DB8E465AC094C3115F2B6983586

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/mar/19/broadcasting.uknews

http://www.cio.co.uk/news/3293973/itv-invests-in-online-after-45-profit-increase/

http://www.ehow.com/info_8109645_types-mass-media-print-media.html

books reference

Part 2: Sitcoms and Genres

Heres what i've done for my Sitcom essay:

Sit-coms have been very popular genre in the television and film industry, usually best seen as a television series because you have more time developing your characters for the audience and producing better comedy as It often takes an understanding of the characters to make the comedy funny. Two Sitcom series which I have looked at are ‘The Inbetweeners’ and ‘My Family’.

‘My Family’ first started in 2000 and ‘The Inbetweeners’ started in 2008. My family has been running for eleven series and it is a traditional sitcom and follows the standard codes and conventions seen in most sitcoms. It uses the typical social family group of one mother and father who are married with two children. The family are dysfunctional with quirky characters and plenty of comic conflict between them. Most of the episodes are filmed at their house and the sets are very limited. The ‘Inbetweeners’ is a fairly recent sitcom which has come out in the last couple of years; this sit-com appears to be more untraditional as it does not seem to use the traditional codes and conventions., but when analysed much of it takes on the same style of the traditional ‘My Family’ type of sitcom. It is about a group of teenage characters that over time you could say become like a family group to watch and something that it’s teenage audience will be able to identify with and feel part.

The style of production is also interesting to analyse, In ‘My Family they use ‘typical canned laughter ‘ throughout the episode and in the ‘Inbetweeners’ this is not used at all. Younger audiences tend to find canned laughter insulting and definitely would not be seen as appropriate for a sitcom that is seen to be cool and edgy.

Also, the location of the Inbetweeners is a hard one to decide if it follows a traditional sit-com because generally most each episode is filmed in a different location, but each character has their home and that seems to be a fixed location throughout each episode and season.

The comedy of both ‘My Family’ and the ‘Inbetweeners’ in many respects follows similar lines using the comic trap scenario where characters get caught in a situation they can’t or don’t want to escape from. The comedy is seeing the characters overcoming the frustrations and obstacles they face and making themselves look foolish.

From doing a content analysis of the traditional codes and conventions for both sitcoms ‘My family’ ticks all the boxes and the ‘Inbetweeners’ ticks some of the boxes. This new sitcom ‘The Inbetweeners’ shows that the present sitcom genre is starting to expand and find news way of entertaining their audiences using content and comedy that is relevant to a new young audience, however it is still has many of the traditional blocks of comedy that have been used in sitcoms for years.

Overall, sitcoms are becoming less traditional because they are not limited to an amount of characters or even the location. This is great for the genre as they are meeting the comic needs of a new generation that need to identify with characters that they can relate to and in a style that is will resonate with them . However these non-traditional sitcoms are fairly expensive to make. For example, The Inbetweeners is very popular and made a lot of money, but so far they only made three seasons and a movie to round it off. This was because the writer thought they couldn’t take it any further, in my opinion they could of taken it to university from school, but they decided not to because they could damage the series and it’s style. My family first started in 2000 In this eight year gap other non traditional sitcoms have come out like ‘The mighty Boosh or ‘The office’ . These non traditional sitcoms have been very successful and haven’t died out because of lack of popularity. My Family on the other hand is starting to lose its popularity because the typical traditional family sitcom is losing its appeal and starting to bore it’s audience with the same family issues and situations. The ‘My Family’ series eventually got axed by the BBC as it’s viewing figure went down.

Task 2

In this document I will be talking about the genre horror and how it has changed over the years. So what are the codes and conventions? Well some of the codes and conventions are teenagers are always involved, blood and gore, people get killed, group of people, monsters, psycho killers and a cliff-hanger. These are the few codes and conventions in the horror genre and there so many to pick, but these are the main obvious ones.

I think that horror has changed dramatically over the decades because of the technology which has been introduced. This has also, affected the codes and conventions by revealing less of the idea of the film. Horror movies in the 70’s and 80’s were very much based around an evil character which could be physco killer or some sort half human and half animal monster. For example, Nightmare of Elm Street was based on a physco killer who killed children in nasty ways in his dreams. Some of the obvious codes and conventions for this is that ‘A group of teenagers are involved and are getting mauled by an evil physco killer’. There are about three simple conventions there. Looking at later films currently coming out today, they show more complexity in the codes and conventions by not making the characters too predictable.

For example, a film called Paranormal Activity is filmed from a individual’s perspective (in the way it is filed) to bring out the realism of the film, this also keeps the monster hidden from the camera. I have also, noticed that the horror runs a lot slower in contemporary films and there’s a better build up and understanding of the characters because in ‘Nightmare On Elm Street’ that they went straight into narrative which ruined the character development for the audience. These changes to the codes and conventions are helping the target audience to understand the narrative better and helps creates more suspense for the audience. Also, the narrative allows the audiences imagination to be more creative.

The Horror genre is a genre to get right because all of the aspects of the narrative have to be perfect in order it to make it believably for the audience.

In conclusion, the Horror genre has changed for good reasons and will continue to impress future audiences to come.

References

Task 1:

http://tv.uk.msn.com/photos/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=156679629

http://www.slideshare.net/guest17b7a0/sitcom-conventions

part 1 BARB RAJAB

I have been researching many websites to do with RAJAB and BARB. Here are some of the websites: