Media studies mest1 section b

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Convergence describes the links made with other media platforms. Discuss how your case study uses convergence to attract it’s specific target audience.My case study centres around broadcast fiction, and more specifically sitcoms. Throughout the decade, and thanks to the emerging capabilities of media platforms such as E-Media, audiences have become very powerful in shaping the media. It’s necessary that audiences are now able to access media content on a variety of different media platforms and this is very true for E4s The Inbetweeners & BBC 3s Bad Education.E4s, The Inbetweeners is a humour filled sitcom consisting and following the lives of Will McKenzie (Simon Bird) and his three friends from Sixth Form. Every episode, Todorov’s Narrative is followed, exploring the disequilibrium’s caused throughout which are disguised as funny and embarrassing moments of the sitcom, after which the pack of four find ways to fix and a renew the equilibrium to create the new equilibrium. Convergence is very important in the success of The Inbetweeners who gained a hit of 238,000 views for it’s pilot episode. It’s recognised phrases such as ‘Bus ******’ as shouted out by Jay in the episode where the pack decides to go to London for a party or the overused ‘you’re a twat’ which can be recalled from almost every episode of the sitcom, allow for the channel hoppers to stick and continue watching the the show after viewing the socially exaggerated scenes. The Inbetweeners opening theme tune is another part of the convergence – it is an instrumental version of ‘Gone Up in in Flames’ by an English Rock Band, Morning Runner. Broadcasting, being the primary media platform to showing the media text to the dedicated target audience, enables for other shows such as Two Pints of Lager and a packet of crisps to link this primary way with emerging technologies such as E-Media – clearly illustrated when an online voting pole allowed for the active audiences to decide who should be killed off the show at the end of the last season. Due to The Inbetweeners having this high popularity with the audience, by the end of the first season, the show was gaining an astonishing 300,000 – 400,000 views per episode and by the end of the last (third) season, the show was gaining a total of 13 awards (for Best TV Comedy Show etc) and 3.6 million views per episode, proving that Channel 4 can stick to their ‘creativity, innovation & diversity’ core values, meaning that it allows for it’s show to have convergence with other platforms. Similarly, BBC Threes Bad Education also enables for convergence across the three media platforms. Directed, written by and starring Jack Whitehall (as Alfie Wickers), the plot follows the life of a newly qualified history teacher and his year 11 form – form K, as they explore the disequilibrium’s caused throughout each episode after which they go on a quest to solve the and build a new equilibrium. For example, in Season 3, due to the teacher strike, the class started a strike along with their form teacher against Alfie’s Dad to stop the redundancies in the school, fearing he will loose his own job. With Bad Education, gaining an astonishing 832,000 views in the second series, a 4.3% raise from the first season, convergence played an important part in making this such as massive hit on TV. Potentially, the target audience (16-24) – young teenagers in the E demographic (and explolers) would be attracted to this sitcom due to it’s atypical school setting & school teacher, allowing them to associate with it. In the second series of Bad Education, BBC 3 had a new plan to premiere all of it’s scripted sitcoms online on it’s on-demand platform, iPlayer a week earlier to it’s official TV Airing, and this this type of convergence has been so popular amongst the audience that it received 1.5 million viewing requests within the first 24 hours of the show being made public online. This proves BBC 3s engagement with the convergence of Bad Education and satisfaction of their core values of ‘never afraid to try new things’.E-Media has enabled audiences to be able to be active with the show. It’s a really popular media platforms because it’s the only one that targets the needs and wants for escepance & enjoyment of the audience – and these values need to be satisfied before the audience can move up the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. E-Media is highly exploited by E4s The Inbetweeners and it’s targeted audience of 16-24 Teenagers. The Show has it’s own dedicated website within the Channel 4 network which has a variety of things including clips from the show, character profiles, links to purchase the films and box sets as well as social media links. The character profiles follow the humour pattern of the show. For example, Jay’s Profiles begins with ‘Right, hello bitches’ – this interactive content of the website is really important part of the convergence of the cross media text. In addition, E4 had a ‘The Top 10 moments of The Inbetweeners’ which included interviews with the cast (Simon Bird) and the producers (Beasley & Morris)as well as a comments section underneath to allow for active audience to leave their opinions on what they believe is the best moment of the Inbetweeners. E-Media and it’s emerging capabilities enables for little projects to be heard for what the are. For example, The 2012 campaign Find Kony campaign to tackle the issues of American Politics enabled a little online project in the form of a 30 minute YouTube video to be made loud throughout the globe. Similarly, Bad Education also has their own site as part of the network of BBCs Websites. It includes information on episode releases as well as clips from the show and more imaginatively, ‘leaked emails’ and ‘student report cards’. This enables for the audience to be able to interact with the institution and ensures that convergence plays a key role in producing the media text. The show also has cinema reviews and ratings such as ‘Screen Daily’s – A* Show’ review. The show also has links to social media such as twitter which has tweets in the style of the humour of the show as well as an official Facebook page which includes more extra content allowing for audiences to be socially interacted with the text and it also allows for the attraction of a new audiences through the convergence of the series with other media platforms.Print is currently ‘circling the drain’ due to the emerging capabilities of new and E-Media. However, as part of the Inbetweeners franchise, following the successful release of a TV Series and two films, gaining an average of £2.6 million on release day, two books have also be released. This included ‘The Inbetweeners Yearbook’ in 2011 and ‘The Inbetweeners Script book’ in 2012 which included unedited and uncut scripts. This has led to the traditional method of advertising of the show allowing for the audiences to never escape the media – where they start watching Episode 1 of the Show they will be so dedicated to the franchise due to the funny parts (such as the time when Will has one too many energy drinks and excretes himself in his A-Level Examination) that they will be stuck going through the different platforms; to a movie, the book and then continually watching clips on E-Media websites such as YouTube or Facebook. Bad Education had a similar way of convergence – a book was written by the director of the show, Syborn called ‘Teacher Handbook’ in 2013. This again enabled the audience to be ever stuck in the media where they will be watching from the first episode of the show, through the movie entitled ‘Best School Trip Ever’, into the book and then again on E-Media such as on – demand platforms or YouTube.In Conclusion, I certainly believe that convergence is highly important to allow the audiences to be able to be active with the media text and having the content available on multiple media platforms ensures that the audiences are stuck in the media, and continuing to watch the text; even after it ends on the TV.