gcse, media studies, media, gcse, tv comedy

1. TV Scheduling
GCSE Media Studies: TV Comedy

2. Primetime TV schedule for Friday night

3. 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

4. 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.

5. 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?

6. Post-watershed TV schedules

7. 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audiences, or is it an outdated principle in an age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)

8. Comparing mid-week and weekend
scheduling

9. 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?

10. 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?

11. 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