How can notions of genre help to understand media production and consumption?

Essay from the year 2004 in the subject Communications - Mass Media, grade: 2.1, University of Central Lancashire, course: Reading the media, 6 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: To understand television programmes and how they are organised, it is important to look at the different kinds of programmes and how they are standing in context with other programmes. Every programme has its own conventions, codes and signs and this is why it is divided in different genres. In this essay I will try to find out, if it makes a difference whether television programmes are subdivided into genres and if it influences the production of a programme and also the consumption of the viewers. The examples used for this discussion are two different television programmes. One is the reality TV show 'The Osbournes' which was first broadcasted in 2002 on the music channel 'MTV' and than on Channel four; the other one is the news programme 'BBC News at ten' which is broadcasted on BBC one. As a second media form I will take the two popular British newspapers 'The Sun' a tabloid format newspaper and 'The Times' printed as broadsheet format.