Research: Sky Living:

After initially choosing to research MTV and Channel 4, as we thought that these particular TV channels were aimed at a similar audience to our target- young adults. We then thought about other TV channels and websites that we could research, coming up with BBC3 and Sky Living and even though both of these channels stem from large companies, they are channels that we both watch and since we are around the age of our target audience, we decided that these channels would be suitable to research. 


 The Sky Living logo is not much different from the regular Sky logo, it is very plain although the Sky Living logo uses hot pink to stand out, I think this makes the particular logo stands out but predominantly to women as pink is usually associated with females. The text used for this logo, as in general for Sky is quite plain, this is not always a bad thing though as simple text is always easy to read and does not take time to recognize a company.

 

 

I am now going to look at the website for Sky Living, I will use print screens to analyse my research:

When clicking on the Sky Living website, I thought that the home page was very neat and well organised but I also found it very plain and simple. The simple design works well with the neatness of the page but there is not much colour. There are blends of pink and purple throughout the home page which I think works well with the integration of black and grey throughout the page.  

When looking properly at the layout of the website, for the first time, it seemed as though the page was aimed at adults due to the simpleness.  As with MTV, Sky Living have an image bar below the menu bar at the top of the page. I like this feature on this website, as on MTV. I think that it works particularly well on this page as there are not many large and colourful images other that the ones intermittently changing on this bar.    

I think that as on the MTV website, this would catch the audiences attention. Specifically so on Sky Living as there is not much other colour due to the simple house style.   

When scrolling down the page, I found that the text used for headlines was not very eye catching as it was grey rather than a bold black. I think that black would have worked better as it would have helped define the sections of the website, rather having to concentrate and not be captured by the bold text.  I found when I proceeded down the page that there were a lot more images than I would have thought, I think that this is a good feature although, I found on the second look at the page, there is not enough text. There is actually minimal text on the page and although the images are eye-catching, I think that any target audience from teens to adults would want more text than what is shown on this page as the picture initially engages the audience but then there is no text to grip them into clicking on the image.       

The only text shown on this page is towards the very bottom of the page where the heading 'The Buzz' can be found, this feature allows the website to be linked with other social networking sites which I think is a key feature of every website. Social networking has become a huge part of every TV program and channel that seem to be connected to at least one social networking site. 

I am now going to look at a link from the Sky Living website: 

I am going to analyse the 'Shows' link as Eleanor and I will be creating shows for the channel, I think that this is an appropriate link to look at. I first clicked on the shows link and and an A-Z list was shown, although I do not think this is necessarily an important page to look at, I thought that it would be a good idea to look at every aspect of the 'Shows' link.  

The A-Z list of shows was a fairly simple page, showing all of the shows on Sky Living, I think that this is a good feature as audiences can view all of the shows aired on Sky Living. If the show is currently running on Sky Living, there is information as to when the show will next air. I think this is the most important feature of this page. I also think it is good that shows that are not 
currently airing, are still listed on this page. 

Similar to the A-Z list of shows, the 'What's On' link shows a list of the Sky Living schedule for today, listing which shows are on and when with a small description of each, I think that this is a good feature as it allows the audience to see as much as they would on a Sky TV guide, if not more online. The schedule list is a scrolling list, I think that this is good as it does not take up the majority of the page, although is it big enough to be the most important feature of the page. 

On the right hand side of the page, there are links to small articles of particular shows. I clicked on the article about Elementary which took me to a page with images and captions of the show. I think that it is good to have a verity of things to look at concerning many different shows. The bottom of the page also allows the audience to interact with others sharing the same interest and 'have their say'. On the right hand side of this page, there is also a news column, I think that this is a good feature even though there is 'Latest' page in the top menu bar.