transitional media product– reflects changes in the contemporary media landscape (it is the replacement for a previous, similar programme, The Surgery

traditional radio programme with a regular, scheduled broadcast time (Sunday 6pm 14/02/21)

available online after broadcast for streaming and downloading. 

opportunities for audience interaction (Audiences can take part in their projects as it is simple to follow along with common equipment)

Media Industries
Life Hacks is a Radio 1 product and therefore has a public service status as part of the BBC. (Tax Payer funded)

Identification of funding for Radio 1 through the license fee, concept of a hypothecated tax. (The hypothecation of a tax is the dedication of the revenue from a specific tax for a particular expenditure purpose. This approach differs from the classical method according to which all government spending is done from a consolidated fund. ) Video

Issues around the role of a public service broadcaster – how does Life Hacks reflect the need to represent the nation. Arguments over the need for addressing a youth audience
already catered for commercially. (Why should programmes be made for a demographic that already has enough media content already by the private sector such as youtube and TikTok).
The influence of new technology on media industries – Life Hacks as multi – platform media product.

Media Audiences
Life Hacks is reflective of the way the industry targets niche audiences and provides an opportunity to consider industry regulation and the availability of new technology shapes audience targeting and response.
• What techniques does the broadcast use to target a youth audience? Using online media instead of printed media so it is more accessible to the youth as they use online media much more.
• Consider the way that external factors – such as demographics and psychographics – are likely to also affect audience response and produce differing interpretations
• Consider the opportunities for audience interaction and self-representation viewers can follow along and make the same life hack as the people in the media creating a sense of gratification and satisfaction from completing the life hack
• cultivation theory including Gerbner
• reception theory including Hall

Social and cultural contexts
Life Hacks reflects an acceptance of diversity and a degree of openness in contemporary culture around personal, social and identity issues.

	Likes:	Dislikes:
CHARACTERS
THEMES			LEVI-STRAUSS the use of key themes to structure stories and characters around familiar themes: family, community, law and order, justice. Often set up as binary oppositions: right/wrong urban/rural, young/old, good/bad

THEORY- PROPP, presents the idea of STOCK CHARACTERS, inc ‘hero’, ‘false hero’, ‘princess’, ‘father figure’, ‘dispatcher’ 

Protagonist- Richard

Helper- Fiona/ Annabell

Princess- Annabell

Doner- Fiona

THEMES-LEVI-STRAUSS the use of key themes to structure stories and characters around familiar themes: family, community, law and order, justice. Often set up as binary oppositions: right/wrong urban/rural, young/old, good/bad

Ability VS Disability

Rural VS Urban

Rich VS Poor

Funding
In order to make Chicken, director Joe Stephenson raised £110,000. Key points:

Raised entirely through investment by individuals (e.g. rich friends/contacts)

No funding body (e.g. BFI Film Fund) was willing to fund Chicken

Raises questions about whether film industry is accessible to lower-income filmmakers

Production
Key points for making Chicken:

Adapted from a play by Freddie Machin that originally ran at Southwark Playhouse.

Filmed in 19 days, almost all external locations so victim to rain, issues with lighting etc.

Film produced and distributed by a new company set up by director Stephenson: B Good Picture Company.

Distribution

Chicken’s distribution has been very difficult:

No distribution deal secured in 2014

Two-year festival circuit won awards and generated interest and critical acclaim for film. ( That has received generally good reviews from a number of critics.)

Premiered 27 June 2015 Edinburgh International film festival

UK cinema release followed in May 2016. Selected for film subscription service MUBI and acquired by Film4 for TV premiere in April 2017.

UK DVD release distributed by Network Releasing. Digital distribution in USA/Canada – January 2018.

Promotion

Alongside film festivals, new technology was vital to promoting Chicken to a wider audience: 

Some traditional marketing: trailer, film poster with review quotes etc.

Social media very important to market film – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.

Film available on-demand now; Stephenson hoping for deal with Netflix or Amazon Prime to bring in revenue and find wider audience.

A consumer based media regulation system means that the people who consume the content give off a reaction which can be broken down by reception theory whether they agree, disagree or are unsure with a decision. Company’s can take the data and produce films that meet the desires and gratifications of the viewer for maximum profit.

A citizen based market allows the people to decide what they watch which would lead to specific topics/ sports/ tv shows being present with the availability for people like politicians to hide the truth and create a false reality. It would prevent important news from being broadcasted.

What impact did the 2003 Communications act have on media regulation?

Consumer based regulatory system that created the regulator Ofcom through the communications act by the labour government in 2003. This diluted the public service requirements of television broadcasting. As a result, Independent television production where freed up to produce content that was more commercially viable

Whats the draw back of a self regulated system?

In the production of programming that lacks the civic-minded republicanism that had been fostered within previous regulatory frameworks. Livingstone and Lunt argue that Ofcom ‘established institutional structures and roles relating to consumer policy. Strikingly, little equivalent activity or accountability was forthcoming regarding actions to further citizen interests’.

How do you regulate media content and organisations on a global scale?

Due to the absence of government guidance organisations are left to create their own moral and ethical codes. Some companies are stricter than others allowing some papers like the guardian to be more sexually explicit. Some reasons for this are the Code of conduct, audience-based factors, advertiser needs and institution-oriented factors.

Product: Capital TV series

Selection Criteria

Television – A product which will provide rich and challenging opportunities for interpretation and in depth critical analysis.

Media Language

Capital is a complex mainstream television product in which the codes and conventions of the crime drama are intertwined with aspects of social realism. Detailed analysis of this media form including the process through which media language develops as genre will provide students with an opportunity to understand and reflect on the dynamic nature of genre. Analysis should include:

Mise-en-scene analysis Semiotics:

how images signify cultural meaningsNarrative

Which narrative techniques are used to engage the audience in the opening episode of Capital?

How does the use of the narrative conventions of the crime drama – use of enigmas, restricted narration etc. – position the audience?

Capital is characteristic of contemporary TV narrative style in its use of multiple story structure.

The ways in which the narrative structure of Capital offers gratification to the audience.

Narratology including Todorov

• Narrative
• Which narrative techniques are used to engage the audience in the opening episode of Capital?
• How does the use of the narrative conventions of the crime drama – use of enigmas, restricted narration etc. – position the audience?
• Capital is characteristic of contemporary TV narrative style in its use of multiple story structure.
• The ways in which the narrative structure of Capital offers gratification to the audience.
• Narratology including Todorov

• Genre
• Conventions of the TV mini-series and the way in which this form is used to appeal to audiences; how it is distinct from, but related to series and serials.
• Definition of the series as a hybrid genre, belonging to the drama, social realism and crime genres
• Genre theory including Neale

• Media RepresentationsCapital provides a wide range of representational areas to explore; the family, place, nation, class, ethnicity, race and issues.

• Negative and positive use – or subversion – of stereotypes
• Representations of family and their ideological significance – Capital constructs its

Wanda Group (38%) Silver Lake Partners (28%)

About Jean

Jean Kilbourne is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking work on the image of women in advertising and for her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising.

In the late 1960s, Jean began her exploration of the connection between advertising and several public health issues, including violence against women, eating disorders, and addiction, and launched a movement to promote media literacy as a way to prevent these problems. A radical and original idea at the time, this approach is now mainstream and an integral part of most prevention programs. According to Susan Faludi, “Jean Kilbourne’s work is pioneering and crucial to the dialogue of one of the most underexplored, yet most powerful, realms of American culture -advertising. We owe her a great debt.” Mary Pipher has called Kilbourne “our best, most compassionate teacher.”

“But many people do not fully realize that there are terrible consequences when people becoming things. … 

“Our need for social and personal change and power is often co-opted and trivialized into an adolescent and self-centered kind of rebellion.”

Language & Representation 
• Music videos 
• Advertising and marketing

Letter to the Free

Ghost Town 

Maybelline 

Score 

Audience & Institution 
• Radio 
• Newspapers 
• Film (industries only)

War of the Worlds

The i 

Daily Mail

Hidden Figures 

All Four Areas 
• Television (audio/visual) 
• Magazines (Print) 
• Online, social and participatory media 
• Video games.

Television 

Men’s Health

Oh

Teen Vogue 

Tomb Raider

SEMIOTICS

Semiotics

MEDIA LANGUAGE 

The Language of Print