Mainstream television channels (BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4) have accepted the decentralisation of postmodernism as a way of attracting audiences in recent years due to growing competition from Sky.

AS Sociology Coursework Proposal

This hypothesis will be interesting to investigate as mainstream channels have changed the types of programmes they air to attract audiences away from Sky. Mainstream channels now have to attract minority audiences and this is reflected in their television schedules. The introduction of Sky has offered more individual choice, has allowed audiences to ‘pick n mix’ what they want to watch and also interact with the television, like ‘Press red button now’.

100 words

Methodolgy

To investigate the changes in mainstream channel programming I will observe television schedules. I will observe mainstream channel schedules which are BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. I will be comparing and contrasting these schedules to Sky channel schedules. There are far too many satellite television channels to observe so I have selected five of the biggest channels. I will look at schedules for Sky One, UK Gold, BBC Three, E4 and ITV2. I will look at the type of programmes and the genre in which they fall and if they have any similarities to satellite programmes.

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I will not be looking in to every single programme on all ten of these channels. I will only be looking at programmes of importance and programmes which distinctly compare or contrast to Sky programmes. I believe this will be mostly during the evening where programmes show their most popular programmes because of higher audience figures when people are at home. Also, some of the Sky television channels only have schedules during the evening. For example, BBC Three only starts its programming at 7pm in the evening and finishes at 3.30am in the morning. This would suggest not enough people watch the channel during the day and so I will look into this. It will be most likely that I will be looking at schedules from 7pm to 12am midnight, although programmes before and after this time that might be important to my investigation could be included.

I did consider viewing programmes on these television channels so I could see exactly what was being shown but I decided this would take a long time and it would be very difficult and expensive watching all ten channels at the same time. I also decided that I would be able to get a better overview of the television channels and the types of programmes by using television schedules instead of watching the programmes themselves.

There are many television schedule magazines, many of which come free with newspapers on a Saturday. It is also possible to look up television schedules on teletext and the internet so getting hold of television schedules will not be difficult.

Looking at these schedules will hopefully prove my hypothesis that Mainstream television channels (BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4) have accepted the decentralisation of postmodernism as a way of attracting audiences in recent years due to growing competition from Sky.

400 words

Contexts

Roland Barthes (1915 - 1980) wrote “The Death of the Author". He believed that language is more than just words or texts, but rather a system of signs, which reflect the society and its given place in time. This could be related to television where the programmes we see reflect the society in which we live now.

Jean Baudrillard

In Baudrillard’s essay "Simulations", he attempts to explain the differences between reality lived by individuals in their day to day life, and the reality portrayed by the media. Baudrillard, like other post modernists, believes that everyday reality and media reality have become blurred. Individuals take what they experience as real knowledge about the real world from the media, but this is actually reproduced knowledge about an entirely simulated or reproduced world. He calls this ‘hyper-real’. This can be seen in the media today in opera soaps such as ‘Coronation Street’. Individuals experience story lines from soap operas and take this as reality.

Concepts

Television is said to reflect the way in which the world is structured, reflecting the beliefs and important developments of what is happening in the world today. It is argued that the social commentary that is provided is in the understanding of the postmodern television show's parody as opposed to serious consideration of the possible truths.

It is argued that audiences live their real lives through simulations of reality given by the media. Therefore the knowledge and experience audiences of 'real life' becomes indistinguishable from that given to us by the media. For example, the 24-hour a day image of warfare produced by the media from the Gulf War. Audiences felt that they had experienced the war themselves, yet they only did so through manufactured TV images. The telecast covered the bloodshed, death, horror and destruction which are normally concealed under the terrain of culture which created a hyper reality for audiences in their own homes.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is also a part of post-modern television. In post-modern television we often find ideas from the past, presented in a certain way so that the past ‘re-creates’ the present. This is particularly true in today’s television where mainstream channels have brought back programmes that were popular years, sometimes decades ago. This has been developed by mainstream channels because of high audiences figures watching the original old television programmes on Sky’s ‘UK Gold’. For example, ‘Auf-Wiedersehen Pet’.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:1YDnGU5IJDYC:www.geocities.com/postmodernismandcinema/pmkid.html+In+this+lucid+account+of+postmodernism++Jibanananda+Das+world&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

http://www.geocities.com/postmodernismandcinema/pmkid.html

398 words

Bibliography

Roland Barthes – ‘The Death of the Author’ - 1968

Baudrillard - Simulations - 1983