Television industry- Section B Main Concepts (Industry and Audience) - Marketing

Explore marketing in the television industry, specifically the three case studies.

Marketing 

Television channels market themselves in a variety of ways:
Trailers for specific programmes as well as general trailers expressing the brand identity of the channel and illustrating the overall range of its content.
Official websites that give detailed, additional information about TV programmes broadcast by the channel.
Official social media accounts that promote the channel on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Cross-platform advertising a TV show or TV channel in a magazine, on radio or online.
This also includes star actors appearing on talk shows prior to a new TV series being broadcast.
Channel idents.
Merchandise from popular TV shows is also used to market channel content.

Link to BBC Happy Valley webpage:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b042r1dj

Production company: Red Production Company
Distibutor: BBC

Link to Always Sunny - TV.com
http://www.tv.com/shows/its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia/

Link to First Dates official website:
https://www.twentytwenty.tv/program/first-dates_833.aspx

Production company: Twenty Twenty
Distibutor Warner Bros Television Productions UK 

Example questions:

How effectively were your three main texts marketed?
(Higher grade candidates need to engage with the effectively part of the question.)

Task 1: Discuss and answer the following questions:

• Why is it important to use a range of strategies to market TV programmes?
• Discuss the importance of social media in the marketing and promotion of your three main texts.

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Ideology 

• TV has provided clear divisions of social class 

• the BBC more associated with middle class viewers 

• ITV known for its popular culture, entertainment output consumed by primarily working class audiences 

• BBC2 offers more ‘high brow’ cultural output 

• Channel 4’s original aim was to broadcast challenging, minority interest programming 

• Channel 4 today has become more mainstream after broadcasting the first Big Brother in 2001 and acquiring This Morning from ITV in 2001, rebranding the programme as Richard and Judy.

Task 2: Homework. How effective was the chat show on the following link to the marketing of Happy Valley and why did the distributors choose This Morning (a magazine format show) for this pseudo event.

http://www.itv.com/thismorning/showbiz/spoiler-alert-happy-valley-killers-revealed

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Example question:
Discuss the marketing strategies used by your selected industry. Refer to your three main texts. [30]

Candidates should be discussing a range of different marketing strategies and use examples to illustrate their ideas.
Generic points (for example, marketed on Facebook) need actual examples to demonstrate knowledge of the campaigns.
More specific points which may be referred to might include:

• Integrated approaches across different media platforms
• Scope and content of the campaigns 
• Use of teasers; word of mouth; viral marketing 
• Use of market research
• Links to different audience groups 

The following are some generic points candidates might make in relation to how texts are marketed for each of the industries. The lists are not intended to be prescriptive.

 Trailers  TV listings  magazine articles  reviews  websites  social networking links  viral campaigns  on radio  star appeal  interviews  awards