TV Shows – Green Eggs and Sam

Television Cultures – Blog Post #2 (Scheduling and Masterchef)

By samanthabeniacbrooks • August 12, 2015 Assessments, COMM1073, First Year, Television Cultures, TV Shows

We often tend to overlook the power of scheduling even though the concept of it is right in front of us every evening, when we sit down to watch television at dinnertime.

“The television schedule is a form of media temporality that simultaneously disciples and is disciple to the conventions of western ‘human time’ as they take place through standardised patterns of work, sleep, eating and family life” (Cover, 2005, pg. 14).

Schedules are important as they break down patterned audience behaviour (it is important to note that audience behaviour is relevant, as the aim for commercial television is to ‘sell’ mass audiences to advertisers in order to gain a profit from their programs). Firstly schedules include the inscribed assumptions about everyday life regarding working hours or meal times. This means that the evening television schedules often mimic evening schedules for households as this provides more relevant television and brings in viewers (therefore higher ratings, more profit). Secondly they cater to the annual pattern of seasons, events and special occasions. Thirdly, traditional slots tend to be more habitual i.e. news programs scheduled between 5-7pm (catered for the 9-5pm working day model), as this reaches a wider and larger audience range. And lastly are the assumptions about what the competition does and might do. Schedulers take into account patterns of behaviour from other networks or look at what is coming up on other networks, in order to provide the same sort of programming to compete.

The first point is relevant in regards to Masterchef as the program is broadcast around the time when individuals are preparing/eating dinner (7:30pm). Advertisers can market products relevant to Masterchef, i.e. Coles (a major sponsor of the show). For example, they may advertise half-price chicken which leads audiences to consider buying that chicken for a future meal.

Schedulers attempt to find the ‘best slot’ for particular programs especially when they are successful. This leads me to think about many popular cooking game shows that are manipulating ratings at the moment across quite a few networks including Channel 7, 9 and 10.

Channel 10 is definitely catering to my tastes with its hit television program ‘Masterchef’, an Australian reality television game show. The show features three main judges, Gary Mehigan, George Calombaris and Matt Preston who are all highly regarded within the food industry. The first episode of season one aired on the 27^th of April 2009 at 7pm, with the following seasons airing half an hour later (at 7:30pm). The first episode of season one attracted an average of 1.42 million viewers (cited in Wikipedia 2015), making Masterchef Australia the most watched show in the 7pm time slot. Six years on after moving to the 7:30pm time slot, the 2015 series averaged 1.168 million viewers each episode maintaining its spot as the number one program on television at its timeslot from May-July.

According to Paul Venzo (2009), “Masterchef was successful for a number of reasons. It coincided with the media’s focus on the global financial crisis… as it taught Australian’s how to prepare food that many of us could no longer afford to eat out.” Julie Goodwin (winner of season one) “embodied a key convention of reality television… a journey followed by a transformation into the more ‘ideal-self’.”

By playing on the stereotypical conventions of the family schedule, the producers of Masterchef are able to maximise viewing statistics and revenue through scheduling themselves around the typical family timetable.

References:

Ellis, J 2000, ‘Scheduling: the last creative act in television?’, Media, Culture & Society, no. 22, vol. 1, pg. 25-38.

Wikipedia, 2015, MasterChef Australia. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MasterChef_Australia [Accessed 12 Aug. 2015].

Venzo, P 2009, ‘Reality Really Does Bite: ‘Dead Set’ and the Development of Reality TV’, Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine, no. 163, pg. 92-97.

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Television Cultures – Blog Post #1 (Deadset)

By samanthabeniacbrooks • August 12, 2015 Assessments, COMM1073, First Year, Television Cultures, TV Shows

When reality television and zombies combine, the British television show ‘Deadset’ comes into play. The show is essentially a spoof on reality TV set both on the inside and outside world of the UK version of ‘Big Brother’. A zombie apocalypse rocks Britain and the last people standing happen to be the participants of Big Brother.

The show was premiered on October 27, 2008 on E4 and was shown consecutively for the five days leading up to Halloween. The ‘scary hype’ that surrounds Halloween, perhaps suggests the reason for this “flesh-eating genre for the smallscreen” (Clarke, 2008, pg. 30) raking in E4’s biggest audience since 2002 with 1.4 million viewers for the 10pm premiere. According to E4, the show had an average audience share of 5.8% compared with an average of 1.8% at the time slot. And perhaps the fact that this show was approached like a “feature film” according to Charlie Booker and featured the real host of the U.K. version of Big Brother, Davina McCall (which is interesting considering the real meanings behind the show), is the reason it was a success.

Deadset encompasses everything that falls under the horror genre with the use of “rapid edits and a range of shots that cut back and forth between the ‘threat at a distance’ and the abstracted close-up of the bloody attacks” (Venzo, 2009, pg. 95) providing the audience with a “gore-fest” (Venzo, 2009, pg. 95). But the show delves further than a typical horror drama, where it begins to explore the idea of audience consumption (represented by the zombie apocalypse).

Charlie Booker has called the audience to question the concept of reality TV and to consider the “capacity of humankind to consume itself, via the media’s obsession with representing back to us the (supposedly) everyday experiences of the Western middle classes” (Venzo, 2009, pg. 93). This is shown through the reality television genre where we see the use of stereotypical and highly constructed characters that express their common human emotions and are faced with ‘un-scripted’ situations which are often relatable to audiences. Therefore, these characters and situations can teach us important things about the society in which we live.

The use of zombies, which can be seen in a typical fantasy and/or horror genre production as well as the combination of the already built-up reality television drama ‘Big Brother’ (made out to be based on real life events), prompts the audience to begin questioning the difference between what is imagined and what is real life. We are essentially faced with an entertaining yet typical and familiar story, whilst also being shown something incredibly different to what we have ever seen before, leading us to question whether the consumption of hyper reality has been taken too far.

But I also think beyond this, the use of zombies in this television program leads us to consider what audiences see as their own ‘threats’ within the real world. It is not just their own consumption of reality TV and whether what we are shown is real or not, but the threats we are faced with every day on our news whether it be to do with terrorism or natural disasters. I think it is also important to consider the fact that within Deadset, it is not only the audience who become the zombies, but the producers of this spoof version of Big Brother, which perhaps suggests that the threats we are faced with are often home-grown and the people we believe give us reliable information, are perhaps also ‘threats’ to audiences. It becomes a question again, linking back to the idea within Deadset, of what is real and what is imagined and can we truly believe everything that we see on television?

Resources:

Clarke, S 2008, ‘Television: Brit Auds Eat Up E4 Zombies’, Variety, vol. 413, no. 3, pp. 30.

Venzo, P 2009, ‘Reality Really Does Bite: ‘Dead Set’ and the Development of Reality TV’, Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine, no. 163, pg. 92-97.

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/ The Logies and Raising Awareness /

By samanthabeniacbrooks • May 5, 2015 Actors, Australia, Awards, Celebrities, First Year, Media 1, Recent news, Singers, TV Shows

So as many Australian’s know, the inaugural ‘Logies’ of 2015 were held on Sunday evening with some fabulous guest stars including the likes of Ricky Martin and Meghan Trainor who performed their hit songs for the wonderful all celebrity audience.

Some of my favourite actors/singers were absolute stars on the red carpet including Nicole Da Silva (Figure 1), Asher Keddie (Figure 2), the Wonderland cast (Figure 3) and Delta Goodrem (Figure 4).

(Figure 1)

(Figure 2)

(Figure 3)

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(Figure 4)

There was your best dressed, worst dressed and the in betweeners. But the reason for this post is to congratulate the wonderful Carrie Bickmore on her first ever Gold Logie after about 4 previous nominations. Not only has she just had a baby (and she looks smashing (see images below)) but her speech was on a whole other level. Bickmore stated in an interview the morning after on Nova 100 that she was going to do the usual “thank-you” but had already done it before. She tossed up whether to end the night on a sad note with a sad story but decided that this was the best thing to do – and so she did rightly so!

Bickmore looks stunning after just having a baby.. not even sure how she does it!

The contents of her speech included a blue beanie and a thank-you to her late Husband who died of Brain Cancer. The blue beanie was worn for the campaign ‘#BeaniesforBrainCancer’. Her emotional speech raised awareness for the deadly disease, something that has had many talking since because of how beautiful it truly was.

On The Project the next day, the whole crew wore beanies to raise awareness for Brain Cancer.

Personally I believe that this was an amazing thing to do. It is so important that we are all aware of how bad these illnesses are, and raising awareness is exactly what we need to do. Bickmore having had personal experience with the illness of course is more inclined to want to raise awareness, however we must respect those celebrities who use their power and fame to go out of their way to raise awareness for any type of illness/charity/cause. It is so important that celebs are doing this as they are often the most reached people in society and therefore their messages are more likely to get across to more people. It could be said that it in fact is easier for them to raise awareness as they are more popular than you and I so I believe that all celebrities should be doing their bit within society.

I hope that in the future I can follow in the footsteps of Bickmore and be as inspiring as her.

Congratulations Carrie. That Logie was so well deserved 🙂

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/ Media 1 rant and ALSO an Orphan Black chat /

By samanthabeniacbrooks • April 20, 2015 Actors, Celebrities, First Year, Media 1, TV Shows

So pretty much today was eventful. I was unable to make the tutorial due to personal reasons and my Project 3 was due this morning. The audio quality when crazy on me which I’m very sad about. I’ve had to keep uploading it and trying to get it working but it ain’t working in my favour #sad.

So in Media news today I have just finished watching the first episode of season 3 Orphan Black (one of the greatest shows of all time). For those of you who have no clue what OB is all about, basically this actor named Tatiana Maslany plays about 7 different characters who are all clones (Urban Dictionary defines it as “a BBC America TV show about clones finding their origin and learning about their past and how their loved ones react and which loved ones are a “spy” or “monitor” to watch these clones”). Dad gave me an article the other morning about the show, which discusses the great acting by Ms. Maslany herself who is able to portray these 7 characters with the inclusion of different mannerisms (even though she looks the same). As this article states: “the show broods on the nature-nuture debate in human biology and cleverly extends the same question to matters of genre – what does a woman look like when you grow her in a petri dish of Desperate Housewives vs. a horror film set?” It is the same woman, yet with many different stock character traits. AMAZING ACTING I SAY and I believe it is definitely the way forward for unique television programming.

Below is the trailer for Season 1.

Check it out!

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/ Netflix and what not /

By samanthabeniacbrooks • March 30, 2015 Actors, Australia, Celebrities, First Year, Media 1, Random Post, TV Shows

So I wanted to write this because of Netflix finally being made available to Australia (thank god it’s here now).

I used to watch the American one where I filtered my location to Los Angeles or something in order to access the beautiful streaming service.

To give an overview of what it is, thanks to the companies overview page: Netflix is the world’s leading Internet television network with over 62 million members in over 50 countries enjoying more than 100 million hours of TV shows and movies per day, including original series, documentaries and feature films. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on nearly any Internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments.

Sounds fabulous does it not? WELL IT IS.

I don’t know whether having Netflix will now cause a stir in terms of Foxtel because people potentially will no longer want to pay for Foxtel when they can access things online for a cheaper price. However it’s great because I think we are moving back to paying for watching things online (I never really watched anything illegally that was downloaded but I know many people did) and I believe that now with the introduction of Netflix and then the Australian versions Stan and Presto, people will be more inclined to pay a monthly fee to watch as many things as they like.
Hmmm.. leaves me thinking!