Teenager Dominant/Alternative Representation

Audience research

The target audience for our production will follow the official target audience of E4 and BBC Three of 16-34 year olds. Within this age group we will specifically target urban youths as we feel they can relate to our production and enjoy it. The demographics of our target audience would be mainly E, for students and youths, as well as D for adults who will want to watch our urban drama. 

I believe the psychographic that best fits our target audience is aspirers and explorers.

Aspirers Materialistic, acquisitive, affiliative, oriented to extrinsics ... image, appearance, charisma, persona and fashion. Attractive packaging more important than quality of contents. (Younger, clerical/sales type occupation)

I believe that our urban drama production will appeal to the Aspirer psychographic. This is because youths we target will be very materialistic and fashion orientated. This will be a trait our characters will follow as urban youths ourselves in the production.

Explorers

Energy - autonomy, experience, challenge, new frontiers. Brand choice highlights difference, sensation, adventure, indulgence and instant effect - the first to try new brands. (Younger - student) The explorer group will enjoy our production and be part of our target audience as well. The fast paced action in our production will attract this predominantly younger group.   An extra psychograph we feel our production will appeal to, but not necessarily target, are reformers. Reformers Freedom from restriction, personal growth, social awareness, value for time, independent judgement, tolerance of complexity, anti-materialistic but intolerant of bad taste. Curious and enquiring, support growth of new product categories. Select brands for intrinsic quality, favouring natural simplicity, small is beautiful.(Higher Education) We feel that this group may be attracted to our production not necessarily for enjoyment, but to highlight social problems with youths today. However to combat this problem our production, despite being an urban drama, will still try to show urban youths in a positive light and try to move away from this stereotype. An example of us doing this is using a white character as the main villain in our sequence.

Institution Research

E4 is a British digital television channel, launched as a pay-TV companion to Channel 4 on 18 January 2001. The "E" stands for entertainment, and the channel is mainly aimed at the lucrative 15–35 age group. Programming includes U.S. imports such as The Cleveland Show, The O.C., Smallville, Veronica Mars, Everwood, What About Brian?, Desperate Housewives, How I Met Your Mother, 90210, One Tree Hill, Ugly Betty, Scrubs, Rules of Engagement, The Big Bang Theory, 2 Broke Girls, Revenge, and formerly Friends. Other programming includes British shows such as Misfits, The Ricky Gervais Show, Shameless, Hollyoaks, Skins, The Inbetweeners, Made in Chelsea, and My Mad Fat Diary. Some U.S. imports, such as Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty are screened on E4 up to one week ahead of their Channel 4 broadcasts. Its most successful broadcast to date was on 11 October 2010 when an episode of The Inbetweeners pulled in over 3.7 million viewers

On 16 December 2004, Channel 4 announced that the subscription channel would return to digital terrestrial television. From its launch until the closure of ITV Digital it was available as a bonus subscription channel. It became part of the Top Up TV subscription scheme until 27 May 2005, when the channel became available on Freeview, with the potential to increase advertising revenue by attracting a larger audience.

E4 was also available as part of the basic Sky satellite subscription channel package, due to a long term contract with BSkyB it only became free-to-air in 2008. This change happened on 6 May 2008 and the channel joined Freesat along withMore4.

In May 2005, E4 introduced "First Look", showing episodes of popular programmes such as Come Dine with Me, Hollyoaks and drama series such as Lost and Invasion in advance of transmission on Channel 4.

E4 launched a Republic of Ireland service in June 2002 which has become the second most popular non-terrestrial channel in Ireland with 1.1% of the audience; Sky1 is the most popular.In October 2005, More4 was launched to complement Channel 4's digital channels. ER and The West Wing subsequently moved from E4 to More4.

On 31 October 2013, E4 premiered a refreshed look as part of the channel's rebranding. This coincided with the debut of the seventh season of E4's most popular show, The Big Bang Theory, as well as the debut of new homegrown comedy Drifters

BBC Three is a television channel from the BBC broadcasting via digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms. The channel's target audience includes those in the 16–34 year old age group, and has the purpose of providing "innovative" content to younger audiences, focusing on new talent and new technologies. The channel is on-air from 19:00 to around 05:00 each night, in order to share terrestrial television bandwidth with CBBC.

Unlike its commercial rivals, 90% of BBC Three's output is from the United Kingdom and other European Union countries. 70% is original, covering all genres, from current affairs, to drama, to comedy to animation. BBC Three has a unique 60 Seconds format for its news bulletins, adopted so that operation of the channel could be completely automated, without the complication of dealing with variable length live news broadcasts. The current controller of the station is Zai Bennett

In late 2001, the BBC decided to reposition and rebrand their two digital channels, so that they could be more closely linked to the well established BBC One and BBC Two. Their plan was for BBC Knowledge to be renamed BBC Four, and indeed this took place in 2002, and for BBC Choice to be renamed BBC Three. However, questions were raised over the proposed format of the new BBC Three, as some thought the new format would be too similar to the BBC's commercial rivals, namely ITV2 and E4, and would be unnecessary competition. The channel was eventually given the go ahead, eleven months after the original launch date, and launched on 9 February 2003. The channel was launched by Stuart Murphy, who previously ran BBC Choice, and before that UK Play, the now-discontinued UKTV music and comedy channel. At 33, Murphy was the youngest channel controller in the country, a title he held since launching UK Play at the age of 26, although on 20 October 2005 it was announced that Murphy was soon to leave the channel to work in commercial television.

On 12 May 2011, BBC Three was added to the Sky EPG in the Republic of Ireland on channel 229. It was later moved to channel 210 on 3 July 2012, to free up space for new channels.

The channel's target audience is 16 to 34 year olds, and it faces heavy competition from rivals including ITV2 and E4, for an audience that the BBC has traditionally had difficulty in attracting. In 2008 it reached 26.3% of 16–34 year-olds in digital homes—the channel's highest ever such reach and above that of E4, ITV2, Dave and Sky1.

On average, nine million people watch BBC Three every week, and it has a 2.6% share of the 15–34-year-old audience and 1.4% of the whole population, according to the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB). These ratings by BARB, the official ratings agency, average out BBC Three's viewing figures over a 24-hour period even though the channel only broadcasts in the evening, giving a distorted sense of the channel's viewership. Despite several official complaints from the BBC, BARB continues to publish figures which the BBC argues are unrepresentative.

BBC Three's programming consists of comedy, drama, spin-off series and repeated episodes of series from BBC One and BBC Two, and other programmes that attempt to alert others of their actions through a series of programmes challenging common beliefs.

Existing product research

Youngers

In this opening sequence to E4's teen drama Top Boy we are introduced to the protagonist of the series. The opening shots of the scene are extreme close ups of both the character's microphone and his lips. Not allowing us to see the character's full face creates an enigma code as to who the character is, however it also effectively allows us to identify with him and establish that he is about to rap. This is added to by the energetic high pace of the non diegetic music in the background. However when the protagonist begins to rap we are able to establish the sound as diegetic and coming through the character's headphones, which we see from the close up of his face, as he raps to the music. This programme would appeal to and be targeted at a younger demographic between 15-25, mostly living in urban areas and can relate to the characters.

The Big Bang Theory

The big bang theory opening starts with a medium establishing shot of the three protagonists sitting on the sofa set in an apartment. This shot is constantly returned to as the sequence follows a constand shot reverse shot with close ups of characters and other objects such as the tv aways eventually returning to this medium shot of the characters. The costume in the scene is effective as two character's are wearing rather ordinary dull colours that don't catch the eye or draw comparison. However the more eccentric character, Sheldon, is wearing a bright red top which effectively highlights his outspoken nature. The only sound in the sequence is the non diegetic sound of pre recorded laughter which adds to the comedy of the scene and allows us to identify it as a comedy. The programme is a comedic sit-com targeting a range of audiences including intellectual viewers, students and even families.

How I Met Your Mother

How I met your mother contrasts to the big bang theory in how they chose to show their group of protagonists. Instead of using a medium shot of the characters and constantly returning to it How I met your mother takes a different approach. Instead they use very quick medium shots of a pair of characters sitting next to each other split by straight cuts and long shots of all the characters together are used rarely. We are able to identify the main protagonist as the only character not constantly shot in a pair and is alone in the middle of the table. His costume also makes him distinct as he is wearing a suit where as the others are wearing casual clothes. The show is aimed at a large age group from approximately 16-35 for people who seek laughter and comedy.

West 10 LDN

West 10 LDN is an urban drama broadcast on BBC 3. Immediately we see an establishing, birds eye view low angle shot looking down on an area. This straight away conveys the setting is an urban area and shows this is going to be an urban drama. There is then a constant shot reverse shot between the establishing shot and two female protagonists in a car. The two protagonists are in a low end, cheap car which again adds to the urban feel of the sequence. The two protagonists in the car then continues to shot reverse shot with the car driving and its surroundings. The run down urban environment again conveys that this is going to eb an urban drama to the audience. Occasionally the shot would reverse to a character outside. The character would appear with their name next to them. The font of the names were in graffiti which again personifies the urban feel to the opening. A stereotype can also be clearly identified as most of the characters are black in the opening. This follows the stereotype that most urban areas are habitats to black people. As well as this all characters were youths and wore tracksuits and baggy trousers, another stereotype of youths as uneducated street walkers and also speak slang. The main character can easily be identified as the girl looking out of the window as the shots constantly reverse back to her and we identify with her. We also get point of view shots of what she's seeing out of the car window. The shot transitions are all straight cuts and rather fast paced, adding to the fast action packed nature of an urban drama. The non diegetic sound throughout is a reggae like instrumental, adding to the urban feel to it as reggae is often listened to by urban youths as well as being commonly associated with black people. This show would appeal to youths mainly living in urban areas aged from around 16 - 35. This is because they can easily relate to the urban drama and the urban nature is clearly emphasised in the opening to allow viewers to identify it as an urban drama.