Wednesday 4 April 2007

3. Website page for a programme: SKINS

Skins website
http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/S/skins/index.html




The Skins website has a range of interactivity for the consumer and the fans of the programme.
The website offers all of this interactivity, and then promises to offer more if the consumer is willing to register to the website or ‘sign up’. By registering, it allows you to be a ‘member of the skins community’ and receive text alerts, emails and other freebies.
By keeping the consumer updated on the latest news in skins, it doesn’t only benefit them but also Channel 4, itself because it is guaranteeing more viewers and publicity.
The publicity and advertising for this programme has been huge. As well as all of the billboard adds and constant television adds, there was a huge launch party set up as well as the official website and to promote it even more to their target audience they have a very popular and official myspace page and also a MYSPACE (
www.myspace.com/e4skins) page for each character in which viewers can sign in and find out all different kinds of things about the programme aswell as watching new trailers each week.
One of the ways that interactivity is offered on the official skins website is through chat forums. The chat forums are places where all of the fans a ‘members’ of the skins programme can share there interest and meet new people. The forums can be personalised as the members can create their own forums with a title that might appeal to different people. For example, one of the forums headings is “How Nice Is Tony!”
This would suggestively relate to all of the females who fancy the pants off Nicholas Hoult. (btw yes that’s right, I have been working with him for the last month)
There is also an opportunity for the consumer to comment the blog of skins as there is a direct link to their ‘myspace’ webpage. This would allow the consumer to communicate with the institution on a more personal level also suggests that the programme is targeted at the younger generation as myspace blogs are a new development and only utilised by teenagers.
The main benefit that the consumer receives from the Skins website is the opportunity to watch ‘Unseen Skins’, the unseen footage that has not been broadcasted officially. This would give the consumer a sense that they were discovering something that had not been seen before.
There is also the opportunity to watch episodes of Skins after they have been shown on t.v, on the myspace webpage which encourages interactivity.
The offer of watching trailers to all of the episodes on the website is another benefit and it gives the institution the ability to rake in new viewers. New viewers that are not aware of the storyline or characters in the programme can get a taste of the programme by watching the trailers and potentially gain more viewers. The trailers are also specific to different characters which allow the new viewers to get a greater insight into the characters personality before they begin watching the programme.
The Skins competitions that the consumers are able to enter are very current and modern and allow consumer to get more intouch with the media they are consuming, it allows them to be more a part of it. redesigning the logo, styling the characters for a shoot in ‘More’ magazine, composing the music which will accompany a scene in episode 5 and creating a short film based around one of the characters. The winners of these competitions are then published on the website which gives the winners a sense of pride and gives all of those wanting to compete, an incentive to do well.

No comments: