TV Scheduling

TV Scheduling can be broken down into separate sections. These are:

Breakfast:- 6:00am till 9:00am

Daytime:- 9:00am till 3:00pm

Childrens:- 3:00pm till 6:00pm

Peek Time:- 6:00pm till 9:00pm

'Post Watershed' :- 9:00pm till 6:00am

This being said then, the target audiences for each separate section is:

Breakfast:- people who get up early for work

Daytime:- elderly, unemployed, housewives, students

Childrens:- children

Peek Time:- everybody/family

'Post Watershed' :- adults

As for the most popular genres on TV, I came up with cooking, game shows, soaps, police

dramas and reality. This being the case then, I switched my attention to the target audiences

of each of the terrestrial channels, and came up with the following:

BBC 1:- justifies the licence fee

BBC 2:- minority audiences

ITV 1:- adults

Channel 4:- minority audiences

Five:- everybody

From there, I then looked into the five channels schedules and figured out what percentage of

the programmes are repeats, and found out that there was roughly 2% of the programmes for

BBC 1 and ITV 1 are repeats, whereas for BBC 2, Channel 4, and Five have 50% or more

programmes that are repeated as well. However, what I also found out about Channel 4 and

Five is that the reason as to why they 'buy in' programmes from places like the USA, is

because it helps them save money, due to the fact that they don't have to them themselves. As

for the term of 'the watershed', this basically meant that those programmes that are shown

before 9:00pm are less explicit, than those which are shown after 9:00pm.

After that was done, as a class we talked about three different terms in relation to scheduling.

Hammocking:- the strategic placement of a programme between two other

programmes; e.g. positioning a new programme in between two well-established

shows that appeal to the same target audience - often gives right viewers an

opportunity to sample the new series

Pre-Echo:- programme placed on a schedule to come before a popular programme

Inheritance:- programme placed after a successful programme in hopes of inheriting

some of its audience

Overall the difference between the 70's and today, is that during the 70's people had to stay

inside if they wished to see a programme that they wanted to watch, whereas today you can

either record it or watch it later online if you missed it. This being said then, it is said that the

reason as to why TV programmes would start later than what is stated in a TV Programme, is

that it allows channels to broadcast an advert before it starts, and this would have been done

in the 70's and is still done today; e.g. Eastenders may be due to start at 7:30pm but might

start at 7:31pm instead.