Lilysmedia's Blog

As I mentioned earlier on my blog, we had to do a contractual and legal assignment and part of that was based on the Stig however there was another part about Miriam O’Reilly and how she was dropped from the BBC programme Countryfile when it got scheduled for a different time.

She took it to court to do with ageism and sexism and she won the tribunal. We had to look into the age range of the presenters on the BBC and I found that the males were always older than the females and sometimes the age gap was quite big however they always had quite young presenters.

On the BBC they have quite a wide age gap between their male and female presenters. They have always hired older males than the females and there is nearly always quite a big age gap between the males and females. According to the BBC website in 1950 the female presenters’ average age was thirty two years and seven months where as the male presenters average age was forty six years and nine months. This is quite a big age gap and since then some of the age gaps have also been quite big however a few have been quite small. For example in 1980 the female presenters average age was forty two years and one month where as the male presenters average age was forty four years and one month, this is one of the few small age gaps but generally the males are quite a lot older than the females. They don’t seem to hire presenters over the age of fifty and this could be due to ageism.

Using some Radio Times listings some researchers looked at over 800 performers and presenters from 1950 to 2000 and 2010. They found that the average age for on-screen women varied between 32 and 42 where as the men varied from 38 to 47. 

It seems that they want to have presenters that aren’t really near the age of 50. They take off presenters over a certain age and replace them with younger ones. This isn’t fair as the slightly older presenters are still capable of doing their job well; their age shouldn’t affect their career and be the deciding factor of whether or not they keep their job.

For one of our many assignments we had to carry out research about research and the different types that are used within the media industry and why they are so important.

Research is quite an important thing in the creative media industries as they use it to produce new programmes and films or just to improve the ones that already exist. There is a lot that they have to do for their research. They have to research into their target audience that they are aiming the new programme at, do market research to see if there is a gap in the market for a new programme like this and also production research which is about how they want to produce their new programme. There will usually be about one or two researchers for any production and they are the ones that have the job of doing all the research for the production. They have to research into things like information like any facts or statistics that they want to use and also opinions of others, people like members of the public, celebrities or experts in a certain area, contestants and also audiences, any props that they wish to use to create the final production for example if they give out prizes they need to have them ready, any extra footage they may want to show like any special events that had been filmed previously to the show being broadcast on television, if they wish to use any still images such as photographs or slides form a slide show then they need to have these ready and also any sounds that they want to use to add effect to the final production such as background music, sound effects and also what the people on the show will actually be saying. hin the media industry whenever they want to produce a new programme or film.

There are three sections that the research comes under. These three sections are:

• Audience research – this is basically about their target audience and the people that they are aiming to impress with the new production. They look into the demographics of people to work out their target audience. These are things like peoples age, gender, race and sexual orientation.
• Production reearch – this is how they are planning to produce the new programme/film and everything that they will need for it, for eample locations, props and obviously the cast.
• Market research – this is to do with the type of production they are making and whether or not there is room for this as well as everything that is already being shown.