TV Scheduling

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

Breakfast
Daytimes
Children’s programmes
Peak time
Post Watershed

Who are the target audience for these segments?

Breakfast - Differs according to channel
Daytimes - Housewives, elderly, unemployed, students
Children’s programmes - Children
Peak time - Families – Mass Audience, 7-10pm
Post Watershed - Adults

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

Soaps are the most popular – e.g. Coronation Street, Eastenders and Emmerdale.
Other popular genres are:
Sitcoms – e.g. Friends, Skins
Reality TV – e.g. Big Brother, I’m a celebrity get me out of here
Dramas – e.g. Blue Murder, Waking the dead
Game shows – e.g. The Cube, Deal or no deal
Cookery Programmes – e.g. Come dine with me
Football – One off’s, not sport in general - just football matches.

Who is the target audience of each terrestrial channel?

BBC1 – Everyone – We have to pay for it so everyone must be catered for at sometime in the day.
BBC2 – Minority audiences, became more popular
ITV1 – Everyone – No specific kids programmes, but there are programmes that kids can watch as well.
Channel 4 –
Channel 5 –

Roughly, what percentage of each channels schedule is taken up with repeats. Why do you think this is?

BBC2 – 30 – 40%
Channel 4 – 30%
Channel 5 – 40%

BBC2, Channel 4 and Channel 5 don’t have large audiences so they don’t get a lot of money to have more programmes, so they have a lot of repeats to take up the schedule


BBC1 – 10%
ITV1 – 10%

BBC1 and ITV1 can afford more new programmes.

Which channels have more imported programmes in their schedules? Why do you think this might be?

BBC2, Channel 4 and Channel 5 as it is cheaper to import programmes rather than make them, Whereas ITV1 and BBC1 have more money so they can afford to make their own shows, they don’t have to import them.

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

Adult only programmes that occur between 9-10pm.