Callum: Auxiliary Task Research: TV Guide Features

Without prior exposure to the public, nobody will come and watch our documentary series.  That is just a simple fact.  Consequently, we must find various outlets of which to give our documentary series some exposure.  One particular way we can do this is by getting featured in a TV listings magazine (or a magazine that talks about TV in some way, shape or form) as a double page spread.  This way, it makes the publications seem like they are endorsing us and our programme and it gives us some extra viewers who may not have been previously interested in our documentary but are persuaded to give it a try thanks to the glowing review.

Before we commit to this, however, we need to see what TV guides are out there, so that we can see which is best for us, if we were to be featured.

TV Times
The TV Times layout one of informality and clearly for an older audience.  Much older than our intended audience.  As such, it's a got simple yet busy layout.  There's one big Medium Close-Up (heavily photoshopped) of the interviewee that takes up almost all of first page, with the body text being kept on the second page.  Thanks to this, it's clear where the article starts and the cheery face of the interviewee implies a positivity to the piece.

The colour scheme, too, is bright, breezy and inoffensive; perfect for the target audience that they're shooting for.  Purple, red, white and a very light blue; comfort colours.  Body text is black, keeping it traditional, whilst subheadings (which are related to the initial topic of the section) are in purple for easy notice and distinction.  The body text is written in a white box overlaid on top of the image taken for the piece; both for a clear distinction between photo and story and to make it easier to read instead of putting the black text on any colour background that would have made the black blend in.

Furthermore, there are pretty much always (I checked more features in addition to the one that I am analysing) three extra pictures are placed around the feature, in addition to the main one.  There's a screen-cap or still from the programme in question, a picture of the interviewee in a personal/private moment (to make them seem just like you and me) and a third picture of the interviewee with a barely relevant context (here, it's Claire Balding holding her book).  Pull quotes are stationed next to pictures of the interviewee and are generally comedic and light in tone.

Overall, whilst nice and comforting, TV Times are not the TV guide listings that we should be aiming for.  Without wishing to sound ageist, their target audience is far too old to both be part of our key demographic and to truly enjoy the documentary that we are aiming for, anyway.

Radio Times
Similarly to TV Times, one of the two pages of this DPS is dedicated to a photo of the interviewee (wide-angle mid-shot); this one far less photoshopped than before.  But that's about where the similarities end.  Radio Times adopts a far more professional look than TV Times, toning the colour down to simple white background (dark grey for the background of the photoshoot) and black text.  Any splashes of colour (such as the red heading for the NTA tangent, complete with a light blue background) are to denote tangents to the main piece or are part of the photo.  There is, in fact, only one photo on the whole spread and no sub-headings.  To off-set this, the text is much more evenly-spaced and clearer to follow than in TV Times.  Finally, the pull quotes are rather serious in nature and are very much related to the topic of the piece.

However, this whole professional veneer pretty much completely disappears the second that you start reading the actual text.  The style is highly informal and very conversational and very lighthearted.  "Here, dear reader, the Mary Berry we all know and love, who only very gently tells people that they have soggy bottoms or too much raising agent, changes completely."  It makes it very readable and keeps the whole magazine interesting to the reader even if it's a story about something that they had no prior interest in.

So, taking everything into account, we should pursue Radio Times for a DPS feature.  Their professional layout makes it seem much more high-end than TV Times but their highly informal writing style keeps it accessible to a younger and slightly-lower class audience than the presentation would suggest.  A lot of these people are in our key demo; we should definitely try to snap them up.

The Sunday Times: Culture
This TV guide is very unlike any of the others.  For a start, it's layout is incredibly sparse and not particularly pleasing to the eye.  There is one photo in the DPS (a wide-angle, medium close-up) but it is massive and takes almost all of the middle of the DPS from the top to about 3cm from the bottom.  It has been digitally altered to match the show that the feature is about, but other than that the DPS is text. Text, text and more text.  Small sized and closely spaced together text.

There are no subheadings and only one dropped capital letter at the start of an article.  Once you start reading, you are almost entirely on your own in regards to navigating the article if you stop reading at any point.  The pull quote, such as you can call it that, is extremely short and very small, stapled onto the right hand side of the image in about the same size as the rest of the text of the article.  As for the register, there is no humour here that's not from the interviewee and no personality in the text surrounding him.  It is very dry and extremely professional.  It's clearly for a very high-class audience, one that appreciates not being "talked down to", but is absolutely not for our target demographic.  Unless our target demo has suddenly switched to upper-class rich people who live in mansions in the countryside.

I think it's safe to say that we won't be using The Sunday Times: Culture when we start courting DPS feature requests.  It is absolutely not for our target audience and the people who read it are extremely unlikely to be persuaded to watch our documentary.  They're most likely to be turned off by our entire premise, more than anything else.