TV SchedulingGCSE Media Studies: TV Comedy

Primetime TV schedule for Friday night

What do you notice?

• Colour code the following programmes for Channel 4 and Channel 5:▫ Soap Operas▫ Food▫ Quiz/game shows▫ Chat/talk shows▫ Drama▫ News▫ Reality TV▫ Documentaries – Wildlife, interior design, travel

What do you notice?

1. What do you notice about the scheduling of certain programmes of the same genre?

2. What is interesting about the scheduling of Coronation Street and Eastenders? Explain why ITV and BBC have chosen to do this.

3. Which programmes are directly in competition with the soaps? Explain why TV broadcasters choose these particular programmes to go up against the soaps.

What do you notice?

4. Colour code any American television programmes you can find on the schedule.

▫ Which TV programmes do you find them on? Why?

5. What do you notice about More4 compared with Channel 4?

6. Look at the channel Yesterday, what programmes do they transmit. What audience do you think it would attract?

Post-watershed TV schedules

What do you notice?

1. What do you notice about the genre and programme content post-watershed?

2. Is the 9pm watershed still appropriate for today’s audiences, or is it an outdated principle in an age where censorship is almost impossible? (article)

Comparing mid-week and weekend

scheduling

What do you notice?

1. Why was the Celebrity Big Brother final shown on Wednesday and not Saturday night like The X Factor and Strictly were?

2. Why are there no soap operas televised on a Saturday night?

3. Look at the scheduling on BBC2. How does the scheduling compare on the different days, and what does this suggest about the audience?

Discussion

• As more homes go online, are young people becoming desensitised towards ‘inappropriate’ material?

• Should parents, not broadcasters, take responsibility for what their children see?

TV Comedy Scheduling

Group work. Pick out all TV Comedy programming for 1 week from BBC1 and ITV1 schedules. Ask them to analyse their findings using the following criteria:

• How many hours of comedy programming was shown by BBC1 and how much was shown by ITV1?

• What type of comedy programmes were they?• When were they broadcast?• Which channel shows the best, most diverse

comedy output, BBC1 or ITV1? Students may work in pairs and present their ideas to the rest of the class