Radio Times:

Best coverage of radio, with the BBC stations, plus Talk Sport, Absolute Radio and Classic FM.

SUMMARY: Recommended for the high quality articles. Best choice for radio listeners. Good for Freeview.

A pick of the best television and radio programmes with recommendations from our trusted critics.

Comprehensive listings to over 85 television channels and all the BBC radio stations.

We choose BBC Three to show our documentary and BBC Radio One to air our radio trailer, so we have decided to use The Radio Times as our listing magazine. We have gone for BBC across all of our promotion medias as we think they would be best for our target audience and the subject of our documentary.

What’s On TV:

Quarter of a page per-day on the 5 BBC radio stations.

Main digital TV channels such as Sky, ITV2-3 and BBC3-4

Mainly used for TV channels and shows but doesn’t have radio stations as a priority within the magazine.

This would not be a good magazine to list our documentary in as the prioritize the soaps within the magazine and it isn’t really tailored towards a younger audience.

TV Choice:

Decent collection of the key channels and highlights free-view channel numbers, however this magazine does not include any space for radio channels. There is also a heavy focus on the latest updates of soaps as opposed to documentaries.

This would therefore not be a good choice for our listing as it would be much more convenient if our target audience could see both the documentary and the radio station on which it will be advertised all highlighted in one area as opposed to listing in two separate magazines.

TV & Satellite Weekly:

This magazine includes a ‘hotlist,’ a rundown of the week's highlights, an A-Z guide to the week's live sports action, the best US dramas, a film finder and a film guide. 

As our final product is a documentary, it would most likely not gain much coverage in this magazine as it appears to have a much heavier focus on television shows and films aired entirely for entertainment purposes as opposed to those with an educational purpose.

Additionally, this magazine states that its target audience is Sky and Virgin Media customers, differing from our target audience: we want our documentary to be accessible to a range of people from different social backgrounds, hence our decision to air it on the BBC, as opposed to airing

it on channel restricted only for those who customers of Sky or Virgin Media. This therefore would not be suitable for the listing of our documentary.TV Times:

Similar to the above, TV times appears to have a much heavier focus on soaps and television shows aired purely for non-fictional, entertainment purposes as opposed to documentaries with educational purposes.

The cover of this particular issue references an interview with a Coronation Street actor, with text reading “Corrie exclusive” and “the Street’s unlikely sex symbol.” This highlights the fact that the target audience member is interested in drama happening in popular soaps, most likely aired on ITV channels as opposed to the BBC, therefore opposing our target audience.

Moreover, this would not be a suitable choice when deciding where to list our documentary promotion as there are no radio channels listed: this again raises the issue of a lack of convenience for the target audience member in having to visit two different products to see the full extent of promotion of our product.

Total TV Guide:

This would be a strong contender against Radio Times: it features a range of coverage on freeview channels, and is owned by Bauer, who are a prestige company in the media industry.

Whilst this magazine does have potential to be used for our documentary and radio advertisement listing, I believe that Radio Times would still be the best due to the brand consistency of the BBC. The Radio Times features a much more sophisticated aesthetic style which I believe would be much more fitting for our educational documentary.

Furthermore, this magazine only features 11 radio channels as opposed to 14 and may be less well known to the

audience compared to the Radio Times, and therefore we will not use Total TV Guide for our products.