For 8 years I have been a researcher for the TV
News programme Newsnight on BBC Two. I am always trying to find new ways to
make the programme a success and I do this by conducting various types of
research. This research is audience research, market research and production
research. This allows me to find new ways to capture the ever-changing
societies’ attention and so I believe that an article would be the best way to
portray my job and the excitement that goes with it. I will explain what underpins my typical day
as a media research. I was lucky enough to enter the job as media researcher as
soon as I came out of studying and ever since I have been working for Newsnight
collecting data to develop it as a whole.
I start by using audience research to identify what
our target audience wants. Audience search is important because it lets us
understand the habits of our audience and their opinions towards our show.
Furthermore, it lets us find out how popular Newsnight is by using viewing
figures. By conducting audience research it can let me know what the audiences
interests are, their age, gender, lifestyle and nationality. I need to do this
so I have a clear idea on my target audience and therefore, the advertising I
do and the techniques I use will be able to be revolved around the interests
and this will make the audience intrigued with my product. There are different ways that I could find
this information such as primary research, secondary research, qualitative
research and quantitative research. For primary research I would use self-generated
research like surveys, questionnaires and Vox Pops to find out peoples’
opinions. I carried out this research outside Wimbledon train station. This
research was geodemographic because I wanted to find out specific data from a
certain place in Britain’s population. However, it’s not just in one specific
place where I will do the research, I will ask the same questions and research
techniques across the U.K so I can have a variety of resources and answers. Some
of my findings were that the average age that we surveyed were 32- 54 year
olds, the gender were females, their nationality was English and their lifestyle
- so we asked what their occupation was - and the majority said that they were
working in the public sector. This data is all opinions and therefore it is
qualitative research. After that I completed secondary research and I used the
internet to find out how many people watched Newsnight and 2.34 million people
watched in between May to June in 2009. As this data uses numbers and
statistics, it is considered quantitative research. This was vital as it
allowed me to understand how popular the show was and in what months it was
viewed the most. So for example, from May to June, 2.34 million people watched
Newsnight and this was the highest viewing total and so the programme will be
aired during these months because the show will get the most amounts of people
watching it.
Market research allows me to understand what is
popular in today’s society and era and it allows me to develop Newsnight
successfully. It is extremely important to conduct market research because it
allows me to see into the current market and it gives me the chance to see what
is or isn’t working and what advertisement strategies are effective. There are
a lot of things that I can find out from the current market. For instance I can
see if there are any things that aren’t working like promotional strategies, I
could find out if there are ay controversial subjects that may offend some
audiences but overall some topics that could intrigue the audience, I could work out if there is a niche audience for the
product and if there is any effective advertising strategies such as posters or
TV adverts.
Again, I used primary research to conduct surveys and interviews. I
asked a variety of people what TV News programmes they watched and the top five
were; Sky Sports News, Newsnight (luckily), Channel 4 News, ITV News at Ten and
BBC News. The conclusion we came to about their opinions towards the programmes
was that they were on at suitable times to all audiences and they had all the
latest news. I also used secondary research, the Internet for instance, to find
out what time Newsnight is on and what other programmes clashed with it. Over
the years of me working here, the timings of the show have varied from 10:30pm
to 11:20pm but from my own experience, I believe that having Newsnight on at
10:30pm is the most effective time because the programme will finish at around
11:20pm whereas if it started at the later time, it would finish after 12:00am
and people will not watch the whole programme because they would have to get up
early for work the next day. All the news that is covered on the show is from
the last week and this will be sourced from the other news channels. To
research controversial topics, I will use VoxPops. I will ask a variety of
people how they feel about dangerous topics such as gay marriage or immigration
and with the results I would feed this back to the producers and let them know
what is applicable. One research technique that I did complete myself was a
survey. I drew up a variety of questions regarding promotional techniques one
interesting question was; what is the best way to get an audiences attention:
through visually or vocally. A majority of them said visually, so like posters
because they can then digest the information in their own time whereas with
audio, you may have to rewind it to hear the information more than once or you
could miss the advert all together.
Production research is important in the researching
process because it helps with the production of media texts such as finance and
location. The things I would want to know in order to actually create my
product is copyright, the budget which I can work with, the equipment or
resources that are available to me, the personnel I have, the location of where
my product will be and the health and safety requirements. I would use primary
research which consists of interviews and observations to find out is the area
is safe to work in and I would also find out if there are any suitable
locations to film the programme such as a studio. I would ask my boss how much
budget I have to work with, as anything I do must orientate around this. I
would also check any equipment is adequate and suitable to use. The cameras
which I would use would have to be the latest and the most modern because the
picture would have to be the clearest and it would make the whole programme
come across very professional. The quantitative data would be how much budget I
could have and the qualitative data would be people’s opinions on where to
locate the programme because I want the best pieces of advice possible. I also
have to abide by and follow any copyright laws that may have been placed on any
products. When researching the possible places to host my programme I had to
find any film and television warehouses that had enough space for me to film
the programme. Additionally, I would interview my personnel because I would
want the most professional, experienced and confident presenters possible
because this would make the programme come across as very sophisticated and
classy. However, I wouldn’t just interview the people in front of the camera, I
would interview the people behind them for example the camera operators.
So in conclusion, a media researcher provides the
foundations for a successful programme to develop because the more experience
and success you have with researching an knowing about the target audience the
more popular, current and successful the programme will be.
