A schedule, sometimes called ‘listings’, tells you what programmes go on television and when. The person that does this is called a scheduler. You can find a television schedule in a television guide, for example ‘What’s On’ and ‘Radio Times’. The television guide gives reviews of the programmes and interviews with different actors and actresses. A television schedule is also found in newspapers, but there is less detail. There are few reviews of programmes and there are no interviews.
BBC 1 and BBC 2 are both PSB’s, which are Public Service Broadcasters. They provide a mixed range of programmes for example education, documentaries and entertainment. All the programmes on BBC are funded by license fees, which are £112.00 per annum.
ITV, C4 and C5 are commercial channels, which means that they show and fund adverts. It also means to make a profit. The BBC also owns C4, so they get more money because of this. If you look both the BBC and C4 show educational programmes.
On a weekday primetime terrestrial channel consists of mainly educational programmes and documentaries (35%). However soaps (only showing 6%) are considered the most important as they have the largest number of viewers.
At the moment BBC are winning the ratings war, with 26% share of viewing and ITV are closely following with 24% share of the viewing. However ITV are winning the peak time share of viewers with 32% against BBC’s 29%. These results have fallen due to the increase in multichannel viewing.
In the ratings war, Christmas day is very important as this is when there is the largest potential viewing audience.
Over Christmas period a lot o high-profile flagship programmes where put on prime time television. There were celebrity specials of programmes, although they didn’t do that well. The BBC showed the second special edition of Only Fools of Horse, which didn’t do as well as last year. BBC also showed a lot of film premieres.
Below is a table showing the flagship programmes on the BBC that received the highest viewings on Christmas Day
ProgrammePercentage/viewersCommentOnly Fools and Horses62.85%This was the most watched programme over the 17.40 millionChristmas period, but didn't do as well as last year Eastenders63.26%This gets good viewings anyway 16.97 million Chicken Run48.96%It is a premiere, shown at a good time, and is a popular film 9.61 million
Only Fools and Horses was a success but not as good as last year because last years weren’t as good as what people where expecting. Celebrity Blind Date was a flop getting just 5.90 million viewers. The shows mainly worked because of inherited audience, which kept viewers hooked to BBC 1.
This Christmas, mainly ITV had programmes with celebrities on, for example, ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’, ‘Celebrity Blind Date’, and ‘Stars in your Eyes’. These supposedly attract big audience, as viewers like to see celebrities’ embarrass themselves, or do something that they don’t do usually on National television. A programme that is good at this is BBC’s celebrity Weakest Link, which shows the celebrities being ‘bullied’ by Anne Robinson.
