Analysing the Competition

The first show that I have found that is similar to my documentary is Educating Yorkshire. This show was shown on channel 4, every Thursday at 9 o'clock for 1 hour. The opening episode drew an average audience of 3.3 million last night, making it the highest rated programme of the evening in that slot among 16-34-year-old viewers.
This show is similar to mine because it focuses of students who have problems with there lives, but in particular, this episode focused on a student who had a stammer, and it looked at how it was affecting his life and school life and exams.

In order to make my documentary beat educating Yorkshire viewing figures, i will  make the documentary just focuses on one or two people so that the viewers can attach to the people appearing on the show, so that they carry on watching, and want to see if they overcome the stammer at the end of the show. Also i will only be talking about stammering, and not other problems such as stress in people and how it affects there lives. So by just focusing on stammering, it will not be confusing for the viewers, which will allow them to understand what is going on, the whole way though the documentary. I will also be educating the viewers on what a stammer is, and how it affects peoples lives and actually go into detail about it. It will hopefully be better than educating Yorkshire, because they just looked at how the student will over come it and did not explain what an actual stammer is, which i think the viewers actually wanted to know. 

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-09-06/educating-yorkshire-starts-new-term-with-3-million-viewers

When looking at educating Yorkshire I feel as if my documentary will best appeal to viewers at 9 on a Friday night, which is one day after Educating Yorkshire is on. By doing this viewers will want to watch my documentary because they will want to find out more information about stammering, in order to understand what the student in Educating Yorkshire is doing through. So hopefully I can get most of the 3.3 million Educating Yorkshire have, because they would have had a taster of what a stammer is and want to find out more about it, which is why they will want to watch my documentary. 



















The second show that is like mine is Embarrassing Bodies. This show is shown on channel 4 at 9:00pm for 1 hour, normally on a Tuesday. The show regularly hovers around the 3million barrier, but last night edged ahead of its previous best, when 3.5m watched on 10 June 2009.
This show is similar to mine due to the fact that, it focuses on treating people with a condition that they are shy about and want to cure. It also focuses on a few people very deeply and follow them on their journey, which is what i am going to do in my documentary. 
To try and get my documentary to beat this show in term of viewing figures, i will make my show just focus on one topic which is stammering and not a lot of different problems from different people, which is what embarrassing bodies does. By doing this it will make my documentary more personal to the viewers and will allow them to want to learn more about stammering, and see if the people in the documentary over come the stammer. 

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/ratings/embarrassing-bodies-reaches-record-high/5010410.article

Looking at my research i feel as if i would like my show to be a Monday even starting at 8:00pm. This is one day before embarrassing. I have chosen to put air it at 8:00pm because this will allow younger people to watch it, and then will allow the older teenager viewers to still watch programs that they are into such as TOWIE and Geordie Shore, which they will watch on a weekly basis. 
Also i can show my show at 8:00pm because this is before the watershed and will then be more appealing to the under 18s, due to the fact that they are allowed to watch it.






















The last show that is similar to the one i am making is called "The Undateables"  This show was shown on channel 4, every Tuesday at 9 o'clock for 1 hour. In one episode it The Undateables ended its series with about 2.7 million viewers on Tuesday night. 
This show is similar to mine because it focuses on people with a problem, that they want to overcome in order to live a normal life. It is also educating the viewing on what it is like to life with a certain condition, which will be similar to mine.
In order to make my documentary beat the Undateables, i will make sure that i allow the audience to see the actual distress a stammer has on a persons life. This is different to the Undateables because i feel as if they show the audience a lighter and funnier side to the persons disorder. So by showing the serious side to a stammer in my documentary, i will hopefully get the viewer emotionally attached to the documentary, which will make them stay watching the whole show, which will boost my viewing figures, and beat The Undateables. 

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/apr/18/undateables-tv-ratings

When looking at The UnDateable i feel as if my program will best aired at the same time. This is because the 9pm till 10pm slot is the best time to show a documentary, due to the fact that it is when most people and especially my target audience will have had dinner and will be resting, which is the time you want to watch sometime different and entertaining, which i feel my documentary is. By putting my show at this time i will hope to get most of The UnDatebales viewers, by hoping they want to watch something more serious and different but still relating to people with a condition.   


Overall I feel as if my show will best suit to appear on channel 4 and air at 9pm. This is because when doing my research  i found that most of the shows that are similar to mine all are on channel 4 and air about 9pm, so i feel as if, if i do the same i will will appealing to my target audience much more than if i put my show on bbc 1 where they do not really have a lot of health problem documentary.