Unit 1: Research Techniques

Unit 1.1

Understand purposes of research in the media industries

Market research
Audience data: Collecting data on any television show or film showing allows the producers of said film/TV show to gauge opinions on their film/TV show before the product is to be released. As well as this, television stations would collect data on their audience viewing figures in order to find out how successful o particular show might be on a daily or weekly basis, this data is collected (in this country) by BARB or the British Audience Research Bureau. BARB collects the viewing figures or “ratings” for many popular shows that are shown across the country. To do this, BARB take 8000 homes across the nation and install a special TV “black box” to log what the people are watching, this is then averaged to the whole population and is displayed as a nationwide viewing statistic. Below is an example of BARB research.

http://www.barb.co.uk/tvfacts.cfm?fullstory=true&includepage=share&flag=tvfacts

The actual table does not translate into the blog properly, so the link is used instead.

Audience awareness: the awareness of the audience is whether the audience really know what they are watching, as well as if the know anything about the genre of the production.
Product reach: A program’s product reach simply means what range of people are watching, for example a show like eastenders or coronation street would have a wider product reach than a show such as family guy, or the real hustle, which would have considerably smaller product reaches.

Audience profiling: This is another type of audience data, however, audience profiling looks in general at who the audience is made up of, such as the average age group of the audience members, such as there being more people aged 18-35 than people aged 50+; whether there are more men or women in the audience or even what ethnicity the audience members are, this profiling helps to define a programs target audience and show which programs are popular with certain groups of society.
Consumer behavior: the consumer behavior is how the viewer watches and reacts to the production, such as recording shows, watching on the internet, or buying the DVD’s

Consumer attitudes: the attitudes of the consumer depend on where the consumer is from, such as in Europe, we have a more liberal attitude to the content of TV shows whereas in the USA, the general attitude is more right-wing and strict, that is why the FCC gets so many complaints about programs on a daily basis.

Competitor analysis: Some program makers collect information on rival channels or shows in order to know how to attract more viewers from their rival. This is commonplace, especially during the popular prime-time slots on Saturday nights in particular; there are two main channels which are involved in this competition with each other: BBC one and ITV one, this is one reason the shows tend to show their biggest shows of the year at the same time, trying to gain the other channels viewers.
Advertising placement: By subtly placing real life products into the television show, they are increasing popularity in said product, making their makers millions. This advertising or “product placement” allows companies such as coca-cola, Cadbury or walkers to get their products advertised during the show; this means that in 40 years time, if the trend of product placement continued, shows would simply revolve around several non-related products and have nothing to do with any form of story-line whatsoever.

Advertising effects: advertising effects men whether the advertisement has had an effect on its target audience, for example, an advert for a movie would try to gain the effect of making people want to see the movie.
Production research

Content. A program’s content refers to what the program is; for example, the plot, characters and locations to name a few. The content of a show is what makes it attractive to the viewer, and is also why shows with modern and controversial story-lines as well as well known characters and locations do so well for so long.
Resources:

Personnel. The personnel could refer to any member of the TV crew, from the director to the actors to the stagehand.
Talent. Talent specifically refers to the actors and actresses who star in the production, getting “star talent” means getting a very well known actor or actress to star in the production.
Finance. The finance a program or film has is basically how much money they have, and what they need to spend it on to be successful.

Suppliers. Suppliers supply the producers of a film or TV show with the sets, props, and anything else the crew will need.
Facilities. The facilities a production uses are the studio the production is filmed in, as well as where the production is filmed using “on location” instead of CGI back grounding
Locations. If a film or TV show needs to be filmed outdoors, the crew will film “on location” meaning at a location away from a studio or set.
Logistical support. A production usually needs a team of “logistical support” to move the necessary equipment from location to location, another name for logistical support team is teamsters or roadies

Costs. The cost of a production is obviously how much it cost to make.

Viability. The viability of a production is its ability to survive throughout a period of time, a program survives by gaining enough viewers to keep themselves on the air, another way a program can survive is by offending as little amount of people as possible.

Publication. The publication of a production includes how, when and where the production will be released for viewing; movie premiers for example, are shown usually only in one city around the world once, before it is published in to the mainstream.
Broadcast. The broadcast of a production is where it is shown to as many people as possible, usually through terrestrial television, in order to make as many people as possible to watch it.

Podcast. A podcast is a production made available to download on iTunes to people’s iPods.

Webcast. A webcast is a broadcast entirely on the Internet, usually through the makers personal website.

Audience. The audience view the production; there are many types of audience, from live studio to television only.

Competition. Competition in television is the other chows which are competing for the same audience, whoever manages to attract the most audience generally ‘wins’ the competition for that time slot.