Children's Television, the influence, thoughts of parents and specific shows.

I will also visit schools to interview children, first hand about their opinions on certain programmes and find out why they watch them. This will be very helpful when answering my second key question.

To gather more information I will be conducting a set of focus groups, each will consists of five to six people who I will be directing questions at for them to discuss among themselves. I will be recording the discussion so I can referee to it later on, this will allow me to use quotes and pick out relevant information.

I have produced a questionnaire that consists of 15 questions that I will be handing out to members of each of my focus groups. This is also part of my primary research and allows me to refer back and can be used as evidence when trying to make a point for one of my key questions.

The only piece of primary research I have conducted thus far is to try and contact some of the industries producers and writers to find out some factual information about different shows. Whilst searching the Internet I located the BBC website, www.BBC.co.uk this was a big help as I found a link to the teletubbies website which then led me to find one of the writers email addresses.

I emailed Will Brenton with an explanation of what I hoped to achieve from his knowledge and set him a few simple questions, I have yet to receive a reply but do frequently check my email. I am also hoping to get in contact with a producer or director for the BBC to find out about scheduling, I have yet to find the relevant address.

My secondary research consisted mostly of searching through countless amounts of websites to try and pick out related information, I found this extremely frustrating as I had to search for hours at a time to find anything that would help me. I made a list of which websites were useful and visited them regularly for updates; www.turnoffyourtv.com, www.limittv.org and www.familyresources.com/parenting. Once I had collected enough information I began sifting through it and highlighting the most interesting parts.

Whilst looking on the Internet I managed to determine what shows were on offer and which were the most popular, from this I chose three main programmes to focus on, all of which were aimed at different ages but for both sexes. Another reason why I chose them was because they had received the best ratings over any other TV show for the same age group and were also on the same channel, this made it easier to access information. The programmes I chose were:

> Teletubbies aimed at 0-4 year olds

> Tweenies aimed at 4-8 year olds

> Blue Peter aimed at 8-13 year olds

I began to research the teletubbies and although I did not experience luck through emailing the writer the website had all the information I needed. It specified the age group they were trying to reach and their aim. It also allowed me to access a FAQ page and I gained a huge amount of useful information. Some of the questions included "What determines the colour of the teletubbies", "How educational are they to children"? and "What makes them fun to watch"? All the questions were asked by parents, this was good as parents made up one part of my focus group and the questions were answered by the writers of the show which meant the answers were truthful and very informative.

I found out about the Tweenies via their official website, www.tweenies.co.uk which had actual quotes from real parents and information on how the show was produced and what made it interesting to children. Although it was not as helpful as the Teletubbies website it still held important information that I could use.

The last show I selected was Blue Peter, the longest running children's show which has huge recognition. I chose Blue Peter because it was so well known, this meant a lot of people had views and opinions on it and information was easy to find. I gained pages and pages of information, explaining their aims and objectives and what has made it so successful for this long. I found my information from lots of sources including articles from books and magazines and their website, www.bluepeter.com. I have also tried to get in contact with Biddy Baxter who had involvement with Blue Peter for many years, this appears to be unsuccessful as I have yet to receive a reply.

The last of my secondary research included looking at TV shows that had children in them but were not necessarily aimed at them. This was to determine what the representation of each age group was. One of my chosen shows was Eastenders because it has a wide variety of character and an even wider viewing audience. I have found a lot of information through a man called Buckingham and have studied an essay he specifically wrote on Eastenders characters and how we view them. I found this by searching on www.google.com, this was the most satisfying research I have conducted.

I had all the relevant information I needed to answer my key questions although I found it frustrating searching the Internet about the influence we think TV shows have on children. I did find some helpful websites, which included opinions, results of surveys and facts. I will probably find the most helpful means of researching this will be to use my primary evidence.

After carrying out all the research I will need to answer my key questions in full sentences showing wide knowledge of all aspects and using different means of evidence. My final task is to watch the shows myself and base an opinion so I can include that as well as parents, teachers and children's opinions, facts and figures.

I have really enjoyed undertaking this project and although it has been hard at times think I have gained a lot of knowledge I did not know before, I am looking forward to finishing my research and writing about the my subject 'Children and television' in full.

Kirsty Baker