TV NEWS; INITIAL IDEAS

We were arranged into group of fours for the project, because the project itself is a very short one, we begun straight away by brainstorming some different ideas that we could do. For example our first brainstorming ideas included halloween and student life. We decided to all come up with one idea each that we can all look to develop, that way we can each decide on the best one and also have a few back ups should we run into any issues with the once that we choose.


The idea that i came up with first of all is the idea of christmas and how early all of the stores and websites get ready/advertise for it. I came up with this idea because i remembered when i worked in a department store and in August i was tasked with putting out some christmas cards onto the shelf, this was my first experience of realising how early stores now sell christmas gifts and cards, and how this can put pressure on lots of people to be prepared and spend their money for christmas. I looked into this issue more and found a news article titles "Halloween in August? Christmas in October? The retail trend that is here to stay" - it was then that i realised how much of a wider issue this is, how up and down the country and most likely the world, that businesses capitalise on the event of christmas far earlier than ever before. As most would agree it definitely isn't a case of the 'twelve days of christmas' anymore.


I think this idea is good because theres many avenues by which we can explore, for example we could look at the financial stress that christmas puts on to people, the pressure to get the best presents as well be ready and prepared for when the shops start selling for the festive season. Contextually we can date this back to 1952, when the very first 'Black Friday' was announced in the USA before becoming the global event that we know today. Though normally held in the end of November so not as early in comparison to other sales and christmas events others may do, however this i think is still a very big example of the chaos and stress that christmas can create.

I thought that it would be quite important within this early research stage to look at how spending for the christmas period has increased, for example £5.6 billion was spent within the UK on advertising in the run up to the event in 2016, this however generates a huge revenue in sales profit.

Furthermore, there is a few people we would be able to talk to/interview for this topic and i have narrowed it down to two different certain types of people. The first being a shop owner or manager, who could contextualize the topic for us and give us an insight into shoppers buying habits around the festive period. An example i have found is a shop called 'The Nutcracker'; a chain of shops that are christmas based all year round, hopefully we would be able to gain access to talk to a manager or worker of one of these stores and talk to them about their store. Secondly i think it would be good to talk to a normal shopper; ask them about their shopping experiences and how the pressures of the early christmas advertising from retailers affects them.