Grange Hill vs. Skins (not literally)

Right I need to do some updates as it has been a while. Last week we watched the first episode of Grange Hill and the first of Skins. This was so we could see how the audience and television has changed. I’ll give you a little information now about the starting of broadcasting and what I have learnt. Television started broadcasting in the UK in 1936 where the only broadcaster was the BBC transmitting a few hours a week. The BBC was the only channel that was broadcast for a number of years but television was stopped throughout the 2^nd world war. In 1954 ITV started to broadcast as a direct competition to the BBC and to give the viewers more choice as it was the first time in 18 years that the audience could choose what they wanted to watch. In 1964 BBC2 was broadcast and in the 1980’s channel 4 was brought to the airwaves and video recorders were produced. As you can see in the 50 years since television started broadcasting so much has already changed as viewer’s choice became important. In the 1990’s ‘the skies open’ as the ‘Old Independent Broadcasting Authority’ was replaced by the ‘Independent Television Commission’ otherwise known as ‘Ofcom’ – this was so independent channels had more of a chance to broadcast the shows. Other shows like channel 5 which would not have been able to broadcast on television before ‘Ofcom’ were put on air followed by satellite broadcasters. Viewer’s choice was focused on even more when Sky and digital came about. Even to this present day television is still changing as digital broadcasting began in 2002, with free view and the switchover being completed in 2012. Sky plus has also changed the way the audience can view television as it not only stores countless numbers of channel but sky plus is also a digital recorder. This gives the audience more choice as they can watch what they want when they want. The internet effects the way the audience chooses how to watch programmes as with websites such as ‘youtube’ and ‘vimeo’ it expands the time a view can watch a programme or film even more.

From watching Grange Hill and Skins you can see not only how much television and broadcasting has changed but you can see how the audience changes what gets broadcast. Grange Hill first broadcast in 1978 and was run for 30 years making it the longest children’s series to run. Phil Redmond was the creator of Grange Hill and also went on to making Brookside and Hollyoaks. It had a young target audience of 12-18 year olds and its most talked about storyline was when a character starts drug taking. Skins started broadcasting in 2007 aiming at a target audience of 15-18 year olds and have so far aired four complete seasons. Skins and Grange Hill‘s target audience are similar but when they were broadcast was swapped around, the audience of today would be bored and uninterested in Grange Hill but the audience of the past would be shocked at what is viewed today. Grange Hill showed education for what it was and nothing more as the audience could relate to it and feel like they were there. Although Skins show education in an unrealistic way and heighten the situations as this is what the audience of today want to see. The audience of today don’t want to watch something that shows normal life, they want it to be more and heighten or exaggerated. Grange Hill lasted 30 years but Skins won’t – this is because with Grange Hill there was little or no competition and with Skins there is so much competition it is being produced until viewers no longer as interested. Skins change their characters every two years to keep it fresh and different which also means you don’t have to watch the first season to understand what is going on.

I enjoyed watching the two shows as i could really see how the audience has changed and the viewers are now in control of what programmes they want to watch, when they want to watch it (e.g. internet, TV, sky plus etc) and where they watch a programme.