PROGRAMMING DEVELOPMENT
Before you can put your strategies to work care-
fully consider the following areas:
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Defining the target audience
Determining prime time
Other dayparts
Available programming
Another consideration will be that you are working
with a schedule already in place. You will have to
evaluate its strengths and weaknesses to see what you
will incorporate into your schedule.
DEFINING THE TARGET AUDIENCE
The nature of programming for the military
audience is such that there can be few absolutes. You
may be programming for an area with a significant
number of family members or an area with a highly
transient military population. The bottom line, however,
is that your audience is made up of people who consider
television an integral part of their lives. Your obligation
is to gear programming to fit their mode of living. A
current audience survey is the tool you will use to
accomplish this.
Survey analysis reveals the who, what, when and
where of television programming. Using the results
from a local audience survey, you can tell who is
watching, what they like to watch, when they like to
watch and where they watch. The sample survey results
in figures 8-2 and 8-3 show audience program
preference. Feature films are an audience favorite, so
that would be an important feature in your program
schedule. However, the survey also shows a variety of
other program types are also popular, so it now becomes
a matter of balance according to the degree of popularity.
DETERMINING PRIME TIME
Once you know what the audience likes and
dislikes, when they like to see it becomes a factor.
Taking the type of programming the audience prefers,
you can now proceed to make it available to the audience
when they want to see it, if it is available. For example,
Figure 8-2.-Sample survey results.
8-5
