REPRESENTATION

RepresentationYou will be looking to answer the following questions:• Does television crime drama offer us a realistic

portrayal of the work and life of crime fighters and if so how?

• How are women portrayed and what kinds of roles do they have?

• How are minority groups represented?• Is crime drama guilty of demonising sections of our

society or are there social groups who do not have a presence in crime drama at all and are invisible?

Reality or Prejudice

• Gender• Race and Ethnicity• Disabled People• Sexuality

Describe a TV Police Officer

• Are you stereotypical?

• Do you use your own prejudices?

• Have you watched enough?

Gender

• It is quite possible that you will be asked to design a TV Crime Drama which centres around a Heroine Cop rather than a Male Cop.

• Let’s look at some examples of women in TV Crime Drama

VS

What does this tell you?

• What are the female roles in TV Crime Drama?

• What is their purpose for the viewers?

• How can you change people’s opinions of women in the police force?

RaceWe live in a multi-cultural society with TV having to

reflect this it can be a very difficult choice when assigning roles on the screen.

It is very difficult to avoid stereotypes. Think about the typical criminals on TV...what do they have in common?

VS

Xenophobia

Fear of different places and cultures.

Avoiding this is a must, in particular with the thought that you don’t know who will be reading your exam paper.

You Do...

• You will have already designed your Hero and decided whether you are doing an ensemble cast or not.

• You will need to know decide how you are going to incorporate different races and ethnicities. You will need to avoid negative stereotypes and try to ensure you’re not being racist.

Audiences

AudienceYou will be looking to answer the following questions:• Who watches television crime drama?• Why do audiences enjoy Television Crime Drama?• What kinds of viewing pleasures and experiences

does it offer?• What is the effect of Television Crime Drama on

audiences?• Why do audiences despise one character but love

another?

Revision

• Blumler and Katz1. To be Informed and Educated2. To be Entertained3. To Socialise with others4. To Escape Daily Troubles5. To Identify with Characters

Hypodermic Needle

• We have no choices in our reactions to TV programmes or Media in general.

• Consider the affect TV Crime Drama can have on the audience.

Reception Theory

• Encoded by the producer and creator

• Decoded by the audience

You Do...

How would theorists discuss TV Crime Drama:

What would Blumler and Katz say? Hypodermic Needle theorists? How could you apply Reception Theory?

Popularity

• Everywhere you look you see a TV Crime Drama. ¼ of all programming on British TV.

• There are even whole channels dedicated to it.

• Why do you think this is?

You Do...

• Use the following link to work out which TV Crime Drama was the most popular this week.

• http://www.barb.co.uk/report/weekly-top-programmes?_s=3

• You will also need to note down how many channels show TV Crime Dramas.

Looking at the figures

This Week:Most Popular Programme is:

Different Audiences

• There are different demographics interested in different TV Crime Dramas.

There are three main groups:• Family Audiences• Niche Adult Audiences• Educated Audiences

You Do…

• Looking at the lists of TV Crime Dramas that you have, put them into the categories you have been given on the previous slides.

egFamily Audiences Niche Adult

AudiencesEducated Audiences

The Bill The Wire Law and Order

Audience Engagement

• Why do we enjoy crime?

• Isn’t it something we need to get rid of?

• We love the thrill of the “whodunnit” element

• We like to find out more and use our brains

Applying Blumler And Katz

1. To be Informed 2. To be Entertained/To Escape Daily Troubles3. To Socialise with others4. To Identify with CharactersFor each of these try to figure out some explanations of how TV Crime Drama fits this theory.

To be Entertained/To Escape Daily Troubles

• Escape from your own problems

• Make you feel better if others are in a bad way.

• Engage your mind with problem solving.

Relationships/To Socialise with others

• Understand more about human nature

• Talk about them with your friends, trying to figure out who did the crime?

• Can argue about the events in the programme, whether you think it was right or not.

To Identify with Characters

• Imagining what you would do in their situation

• Apply some of the psychology you learn to your own life.

• Give you an idea on difficult moral dilemmas.

Information

• Teach us about how the Police solve crimes

• CSI: teaches us more about science

• Can affect our understanding as it’s not always real.

You Do…

• 15 mark Question:

“Why is TV Crime Drama so popular with such a wide audience?”

Remember to give examples.

Effects Debate

• How are we affected by Media?• TV Crime Drama deals with the darker side of

society so we need to ask the question:– What effect does this have on audiences of TV

Crime Drama?– Does watching violence on TV make you violent?

You Do…

• In groups you each have a real life crime. What you will need to do is look at the crime and make a plan of how you could turn this into a storyline for a TV Crime Drama. Considering the effects debate and the sensitivity of the crime and it’s victims, how could you do this?

• What Characters, Locations, Changes would you need to make?

Institutions

£3 billion

EDUCATE, INFORM, ENTERTAIN

Oct. 1984 – August 2010

Satellite Channels

• The rise of multi-channel television has allowed for specialist channels devoted to niche audiences. As the audience share for satellite/cable channels is relatively small these channels rely largely on cheap repeats and imports.

You Do…

• Looking at the TV Crime Dramas on each of these channels, which of the channels are more likely to cater for more than one target audience.

• Discuss why this is.

SCHEDULING TV CRIME DRAMA

• It is very important that TV Crime Drama is scheduled appropriately.

• You need to be careful not to offend people when scheduling programmes.

You Do…

• Looking at the TV Guide identify the TV Crime Dramas and see if you can identify any patterns in their scheduling.

What you should have found• BBC-Channel5 (Terrestrial) • Family Shows in the Afternoon:– Diagnosis Murder BBC1 2:15PM– Midsomer Murders ITV 4:00PM

• Primetime Adult Shows in the evening:– The Mentalist; Law and Order; NCIS and CSI channel

5: 7:15pm-11:55pm– Whitechapel; Law and Order: UK. ITV1 9pm -> – Luther; New Tricks: BBC1 9pm ->

Satellite/Cable • Daytime Viewing:– ITV3: Poirot, Miss Marple, Inspector Morse,

Heartbeat, Ironside and Monk– ITV4: The Sweeney, Randall and Hopkirk– Channel One: The X Files

Satellite/Cable cont…

• Primetime:– Five USA: The Mentalist, NCIS, CSI, Dark Blue– Living: Medium and Criminal Minds– Universal Channel: Shattered, Without a Trace and

Law and Order– FX: The Listener, Dexter, Life and NCIS– Sky1: Thorne

You Do…

• Looking at what is on each channel think about what institution would be best to host your idea.

• Come up with a pitch to the company, outlining your idea and why they should take on your TV Crime Drama idea.