3 Minute Wonder: Research - Market Research

If one were making a documentary under regular circumstances (that is to say, not for 3 Minute Wonder on Channel 4) then it would be sensible to learn a bit about the current market for documentaries, and determine when and where it would be most sensible to show your documentary. I did just this, starting by finding out how many documentaries are shown on BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 over a 5 day period (Thursday through Monday). What I found was mildly interesting:

From here we can tell that BBC2 shows the most documentaries by far, encompassing just over half of all the documentaries shown on any of the 4 channels over this 5 day period. We can also quite safely assume that there are a lot more documentaries shown on weekdays than weekends. However, a lot of these are shown during the day, or off-peak. While a lot are shown, mostly documentaries are vastly outnumbered by other forms of programming such as drama or sitcoms.

To further my research I went on BARB's website to find the top 30 programs for each channel in the week just gone. For BBC1, only one documentary made it onto the list; Pound Shop Wars. for BBC2,  10 of the top 30 - a third - were documentaries. ITV had one in the top 30. Channel 4 had the most popular documentaries in it's top 30 with 16 - just over half.

Channel 4's One Born Every Minute got 3.18 million viewers last week (making it the most popular programme on the channel), whereas BBC2's most popular documentary last week (Hairy Bikers' Asian Adventure) only got 2.24 million. BBC's Pound Shop Wars was the most viewed documentary overall with 5.29 million viewers, even though it only ranked 18 on BBC1's top 30.