Newspaper Article about a Media Researcher

         After working for Channel 4 for almost 7 years now, I have asked to write an article discussing my daily duties of my job, a media researcher. When I started my career at Channel 4 many years ago, I had secured a media researching internship, allowing me to train and progress to where I am today. I performed the majority of the duties I do today, although I was supervised and given advice and direction until my manager promoted me, allowing me to work alone. In order to make the Channel 4 program successful, it is imperative that I conduct the appropriate research; audience research, market research and production research. These three types of research combined allow me to gather new and current ideas to keep up with society’s desires and also to make sure the programs appeal to the viewers. In this article I will be exploring my day-to-day activities whilst I completed my research for the Channel 4 documentary, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. 

         The most important material to explore when researching for a television documentary is the audience research. It is important to conduct audience research so as to identify the make-up and habits of the audience of the particular program or network. Furthermore, audience research allows us to understand what improvements could be made to ensure the media is successful and ensure the producers can tailor the media to be suited to the group in question. The main aim of audience research is to identify the target audience. This can be done via various methods of primary and secondary research for example interviews, questionnaires or observations, or publications identifying what age range watch documentaries or interview transcripts. The primary and secondary research helps to narrow down the audience we would eventually target to documentary towards. Also, it is beneficial to have views and opinions of potential viewers as it can contribute towards tailoring the show around them, leading to more viewers and therefore more revenue for Channel 4. One way I collected information regarding audience research for the documentary was via vox pops. This self-generated, primary research allowed me to collect information about the target audience’s age, gender, lifestyle (i.e. income and how they access media), nationality/ethnicity, interests, location (where they live) and viewing habits. The interviews were conducted in major city centres across Britain such as London, Manchester, Belfast and Newcastle. Whilst in these busy areas we handed out questionnaires for passers-by to complete as the vox pop interviews took place. The questionnaires collected numerical data by asking questions with simple tick box answers that were turned into graphs and statistically analysed in the process. The questions included ‘how old are you?’ with age ranges including ’12-17’ and ’51-65’. As My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding has a mass audience, we provided passers-by of many different ages to complete the survey for our audience research. Due to the mass audience, it was important that we did not exclude any age ranges as that kind of method could have had a significant impact on our research and the success of the documentary. Throughout the rest of the survey, there were also questions such as ‘where do you live?’ with tick box options including ‘Surrey’ or ‘Middlesbrough’ and ‘which television channels do you watch the most often? Please tick more than one.’ with answers including many of Channel 4’s competitors. In contrast to the questionnaires, the VoxPop interviews collected non-numerical data, people’s opinions and feelings. Questions included ‘would you enjoy to watch a documentary about Irish traveller lifestyle and if so, why?’ leading the interviewee to express the opinion. These two methods of primary research collected both qualitative and quantitative data regarding the audience demographic, geodemographic and audience profile. An audience profile is extremely valuable to us as it contains the basic information about our target audience, giving us the opportunity to aim specific features of the documentary and advertising towards them. This will then allow us to gradually add detail to the profile and in turn tailor the advertising and different features of the documentary around the target audience. This will help us appeal to the target audience and therefore maximise viewings and ratings, leading to higher revenue for the company.

         The next step in this process is to conduct market research. Market research will have a major contribution to the success of the documentary on Channel 4, as we are able to gain information and feedback of the current products that will be in competition with our show. Furthermore, market research gathers information about the popular products in our medium, products that were not successful, controversies we should aim to avoid, the best method of advertising for the documentary and allows us to identify a niche market. My team and I organised a focus group to answer questionnaires and interview style questions about what types of documentary they have viewed in the past, what documentaries they particularly enjoyed, if they know of any upcoming documentaries on the BBC or ITV and what features of a documentary appealed to them and what features would deter them from viewing the show. The participators in the focus group were both men and women aged 24-40. We chose this age range as we felt that people of that age are most likely thinking about settling down and getting married at some point in the future. However we felt that people of this age are also young enough to use social media sites to comment on the show and the possible shocking and controversial scenes and occurrences we may come across; this may help advertise the show and therefore make the show more successful. People aged above 40 are most likely already settled down and may not be interested in what the documentary entails; however they could create word-of-mouth advertising through talking to their friends about the series of events. When we realised this we set up another focus group with people aged 40-55 so as to ensure we gathered as much information as we could to aid us in the process. Our primary research helped us to compare the style of documentary shown on competing channels, for example we concluded that the BBC produced factual and formal documentaries and ITV produced very few documentaries, as they were more focused on light entertainment shows such as Surprise Surprise. We used secondary sources such as BARB and RAJAR to expand on the information we gathered about our competitors through the primary sources so as to have accurate and up-to-date information that we could use further along in the production of the documentary. Our secondary research included viewing statistics such as average weekly viewings for various competing channels such as BBC1, BBC2 and ITV and many others. The qualitative and quantitative data gained from our research also allowed us to identify why it was an important feature of the process; we are able to conduct a competitor analysis with the data we have collected, as well as allowing us to gain information about advertising placements. It is important to carry out a competitor analysis as it allows us to analyse sales and marketing campaigns of any competing products in our medium. This helped us in the making of the documentary identify the ideal target audience as we were able to extract information from our competitors’ audiences. It is also important to gather information about advertising placements as we can find out what placements are most successful at attracting our target audience. Market research will help the overall success of the documentary on Channel 4 as it provides vital information to help appeal to the target audience as well as what to avoid, ensuring the viewers are not put off watching the series.

         The final step in my job was to carry out production research. It is important for a media company to carry out production research so as to understand what is required in order to create the media and how viable the project is. It was imperative that I carry out production research for Channel 4 to ensure the company had planned what would be needed to make My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. A list of things I needed to research were; what equipment and resources were needed; the company’s budget; what personnel would be required; location of filming; story board for the documentary titles; health and safety regulations and copyright. It was extremely important that these things were looked into properly so as to ensure the company did not come across any problems during the making of the documentary. It was necessary to investigate what budget the company obtained as I would not be able to make arrangements with film crews, graphic designers and other personnel if I was unaware of the available budget. I had to negotiate the cost of hiring the equipment to film the documentary as well as the labour costs of the personnel operating the kit. Furthermore, finding someone to record the voice over for the documentary was necessary and also involved negotiating pay, similarly to finding adequate graphic designers to create the titles for the series of documentary episodes. To begin, I searched directories and the internet to find contact information for potential employees to interview for the above responsibilities- another example of secondary research. I then conducted primary research; this included conducting various phone call interviews and face-to-face interviews and trials with film crews, graphic designers and celebrities interested in recording the voice over. My qualitative data originated from the interviews I conducted; I had made notes during the interview indicating strengths and weaknesses of the candidates for each responsibility in order to compare and contrast the notes when it was time to make a final decision on who to employ for the fixed term job. I gathered quantitative data whilst researching the different companies I interviewed; I was able to find a few satisfaction ratings regarding their service which contributed to the quantitative data I collected. The production research I conducted made a big difference in the success of the documentary on Channel 4 as it collected a lot of very important information regarding the viability of the project. The information gathered indicated that the company would not be able to employ the regular film crew as they charged too much, therefore the team has to negotiate with the other potential employees in an attempt to collect the necessary funds for the well established film crew. Unfortunately, this did not go as planned and we were unable to pay the film crew we had chosen to help us produce the documentary, however, the other film crew I had interviewed were enthusiastic be involved in our project and were very excited when we asked them to be a part of it. The production research gave the superior producers the necessary information they needed to budget for the project and maximise the feasibility of the documentary.

         To summarise, my job as a media researcher for Channel 4 has been crucial to the success of many different TV shows and documentaries produced in the past; and also will be crucial in the future. I feel that the audience research, market research and production research allows the company to take into account viewers’ opinions, competitor successes and the viability of projects, allowing the producers and other workers to help make the projects successful and popular.