OCR GCSE Media Studies

Example Answers

 

Here is a complete script (all five questions answered from the June 2011 paper - Tomb Raider):

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a complete script (all five questions answered from the June 2010 paper - Bourne Identity):

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is an INCREDIBLY detailed answer to Question 4a, addressing the scheduling of The Inbetweeners.

 

Discuss in detail how and why one comedy programme was scheduled on one or more channels.

 

The first series of  The Inbetweeners was scheduled on E4 at 10pm on a Thursday. Notably, E4 scheduled the first two episodes as a double bill. This would have been to generate more loyalty for the show and retain the audience for the rest of the series. This evidently worked as the programme reached a high audience rating of 422,000, placing it 8th for E4.

 

The 10pm timeslot falls within primetime, another strategy for ensuring a higher audience for the first episode of a new, original series. The time is also post-watershed, which allows for the programme’s transgressive humour and content that would be inappropriate for children. The programme was stacked in a group of programmes all with similar audience appeal and content: Friends at 8.30 and New Heroes of Comedy: Lucas and Williams at 9pm. Both programmes are comedies and E4 would have hoped that they would sweep the viewer from one programme to the next. In addition to stacking, New Heroes of Comedy and Reaper (shown immediately after The Inbetweeners double bill) were used to hammock The Inbetweeners. Reaper was an established programme regularly featuring on E4’s top ten viewed programmes (data from BARB). On top of using Reaper to part-hammock the programme, the double-bill of The Inbetweeners delayed Reaper’s regular timeslot, a strategy which may have attracted the programme’s regular audience too. Furthermore, timeslot of 10pm is an example of counterprogramming: The Inbetweeners countered the news being shown on the mainstream channels BBC1 and ITV1, providing an alternative that would increase the likelihood of their young target audience watching.

 

Channel 4’s decision to schedule the programme on E4 allowed it reach its target audience more effectively; E4 is aimed at a niche audience of younger viewers (16-34 according to Channel 4’s own annual report) within the C1C2DE demographic. The hope was that the programme’s focus on the lives of 16 year olds would appeal to E4’s similarly aged target audience. Another reason for the programme being scheduled on E4 is because it fits the channel’s bill of showing “fresh British broadcasting” (Channel 4 annual report). It also fits Channel 4’s wider remit and ethos of producing distinctive and innovative programmes (The Inbetweeners was prasied for its originality) but scheduling on E4 allows for the transgressive and risuq content of the show that would not have suited the flagship channel’s more mainstream, and educational, ethos and audience.

 

Finally, the choice of Thursday gave the programme the chance of benefiting from the ‘water cooler effect’, the phenomenon of viewers of a programme discussing the programme in the workplace or at school (as per the 16-34 target audience) the next day, in this case, on a Friday. E4’s schedulers would have hoped this would both retain and increase the programme’s audience.