P5

Representation:


Gender/Sex

When considering gender, Family Guy seems to correlate with male dominance like other cartoons such as King of the Hill and the Simpsons. Most of the main characters such as Peter, Stewie, and Brian are all males. When Family Guy makes a joke, the women don't tend to be involved with any of them, because most of the jokes are related to women.  But Family Guy makes fun of everything, what I noticed is that it exaggerates the way women are looked upon in society even today.



Disability

Family Guy's portrayal of disability is undermining of political correctness.  The show is a type of show to 'take the mick' out of disability because it is a sick humoured TV show. People are against how Family Guy make jokes like this because they think its sick, but guys? Its a TV show, its not real. But a lot of people will not watch the show because of this, then there is a lot of people who find jokes like that hilarious and carry on watching it more.

Ethnicity
Regional and nation identify
religion

The show is also pretty bad when it comes to portraying the likes of Ethnicity, National Identity and Religion. This is because the show can be pretty racist. But once again it is just a show.. This is what makes the show funny! The show is about having sick humour, enjoying cut away jokes and to enjoy watching it full stop. People have put a lot of complaints in about family guy making jokes about this, but Family Guy have ignored it because there is more who enjoy it than more who don't.




Affect on the audience

The form and style of the show have a high level of sexual jokes, violence, racism and lots more. This has a big effect on the audience because some people don't like some of them stuff that happens in the show so they stop viewing it. This does cut the viewing ratings of the show down but they are still pretty high and there not going to stop doing something which is the main part of the show which gets them the views for people who complain. Family Guy has a very strong fan base, for instance they wrote one of the characters off called Brian which is the talking dog, all the fans of Family Guy where unhappy and protested against it so they had to bring him back into the show. This shows how strong the fan base of family guy can be and the attachment fans have to some of the characters.

Here's a link of Family Guy viewers not happy about the death of Brian and making a petition. http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/11/25/family-guy-fans-petition-brian/ 

 

 

 

Legal and Ethical issues.

The adverts of Family Guy get put onto the channels they are on but cut out scenes that could be offensive to the younger viewers watching but they are also realised onto YouTube. This could be a problem because Family Guy is rated 15 in the UK and children under the age of 15 could watch these videos on YouTube. The trailer to season 11, this trailer uses the phrase "would you rather" then cuts away to loads of scenes in the series, but in this scene they mention a lot of phrases about sex and bad scenes for young ones not to watch. The parents of the children watching this wouldn't be happy knowing they've watched it because its too rude for the young.

BBFC

The BBFC is a trusted guide to media content. Working as an independent, self-financing and not-for-profit media content regulator, the BBFC operates transparent, consistent and trusted co-regulatory and self-regulatory classification and labelling systems in the UK. The BBFC's income is derived solely from the fees it charges for its services, calculated by measuring the running time of films, DVDs/videos and other works submitted for classification
The BBFC has published new Classification Guidelines alongside the results of the large-scale public consultation which underpins them. The new Classification Guidelines came into force on the 24th February 2014.

Media Giants

Time Warner

 

Movie:

The Hangover is a 2009 American comedy film, co-produced and directed by Todd Phillips and written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. It is the first film of The Hangover franchise. The film stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, and Jeffrey Tambor.

 

Magazine:

Look is a glossy high street fashion and celebrity weekly magazine for young women. It is published by IPC Media, and edited by Ali Hall. The magazine focuses on fashion, high street shopping advice, celebrity style and news, and real life stories

TV Show:

Ed, Edd n Eddy is a Canadian-American animated comedy television series created by Danny Antonucci and produced by Canada-based a.k.a. Cartoon. It premiered on Cartoon Network on January 4, 1999. 

The Walt Disney

Movie:

Finding Nemo is a 2003 American computer-animated comedy-drama adventure film written and directed by Andrew Stanton, released by Walt Disney Pictures, and the fifth film produced by Pixar Animation Studios.

Magazine:

ESPN The Magazine is a biweekly (once every two weeks) sports magazine published by the ESPN sports network in Bristol, Connecticut in the United States.

 

TV Show:

ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of the American Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company.

Fox:

 

The Simpsons Movie is a 2007 American animated comedy film based on the animated television series The Simpsons.

 

 

Magazine:

 

 

 



MasterChef Magazine, a monthly spin-off publication adopting the series' brand, went on sale in May 2010. Following a high-profile launch, the magazine exceeded its initial sales target within a short space of time, selling 90,000 copies in three days.

 

TV Show:

 

 

Family Guy is an American adult animated sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie and their talking pet dog Brian.

 

P4

Distribution and Advertising

Family guy is distributed on 2 TV channels which are BBC 3 and FOX. The seasons they show on these channels in the UK are a year old or older. Because we live in the UK we don't get the new ones every week till a year after release. Fox must be linked with Netflix because it is possible to watch family guy on it. They sell DVDs of family guy in a lot of shops, the only ones they don't sell is the ones that are still getting put onto the TV each week in America.
The adverts that are shown from family guy are quick and witty to make you laugh and want to watch the series when it is show on the TV, they also do this a lot to draw your attention if your a Family Guy fan or not to do there best to get new viewers. The adverts appeal to all people of ages and sex because they make lots of jokes on the adverts to appeal once again to more people to watch the show.
This is a trailer advert for family guy season 11 trailer which was distributed onto YouTube for the viewers to watch and there would be short clips showed on the TV channels it would be show on.

P3

AUDIENCE

 

Gender:

Family Guy is really a mixed gender TV show, but it does tend to make quiet a bit of sexist jokes towards girls, but that shouldn't stop females watching it? Its just humour, its around us every second of the day.

Age:

The show is animated comedy. The age you have to be to watch Family Guy is 15+ but myself I've watched it since I was 12 and I am now 17. So it does appeal to younger audience. Some adults find the show stupid, like for example my mam thinks its a pointless TV show and stupid, but people have different humour. I'd say the audience should be between 14-30 but it could vary.

Lifestyle:

The viewers of Family Guy must have a lot of time to watch the show, if they are a hard working person they shouldn't have any time to watch the show, if its for children aged 15+, they should be revising than watching the show. The show is normally appealed to the older young adult because it makes jokes about the 90s or older, but they do make jokes about life today.
Spending Power:
The spending power of Family Guy would be pretty low, because you can access the show on BBC 3, which is a Freeview channel which comes free with the majority of TVs sold today. The only other way money could be spent is to watch the show on Netflix or Fox channel, which Netflix is 7 pound a month and FOX comes with a TV package of Virgin, Sky or BT.

 

Family Guy questionnaire:

NAME:

Are you male or female?


Have you ever watched Family Guy?


If yes, where did you first watch the show?


Did you like the show?


I tested this on 3 people, here are the results.

There was 1 female and 2 males, all of them had watched the show, so by this you already know people watch the show. The only female and one of the males first saw the show on BBC 3 but the other male watched it on FOX.

Case Study

Family Guy is an American adult animated sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their talking pet dog Brian. The show is set in the fictional city of Quahog, Rhode Island, and exhibits much of its humor in the form of cutaway gags that often lampoon American culture. Family guy was aired in 1999, Family guy got its idea of witty comedy from South Park which was aired in 1997, both shows are similar in the way the imitate America in the TV shows.

  

 

 

PURPOSE, GENRE, FORM, STYLE, CONTENT, MEANING AND PRODUCTION PROCESS:  

 

Purpose:

Family guy is created by Seth macfarlane, the show gets produced by Fox Broadcasting company. Family guy is a American adult animated sitcom. Every episode of Family guy runs on average 25 minutes a show, including adverts in-between.

Throughout the show they make jokes and it tends to have a flash back or a cut away joke.

Genre:

Family guy is a animated sitcom in which is it a comedy about life to life things which get extended more than it should. They are lots of other animated sitcoms in TV for instance American Dad, Simpsons, King of the hill, with Family Guy they have a talking dog, which makes it whacky, American dad is pretty similar because they have a alien and a talking godfish.

The family has a talking dog and a talking baby which acts like an Adult the dad of the family acts like a child which is like the opposite of each other. The style of the show is a animated tv show which is 2D.

Form and Style:

The colours that are shown in the show are always bright colours which stand out to show the mood is good in the show and its a light and happy scene. This is a unrealistic show because of the wacky things that happen in it for instance there is a 10 minute scene in the show of Peter the dad having a fight with a talking chicken the size of the human and the fight goes on for ever, they fight more in future episodes. They have a talking dog and baby which go on adventures with the talking dog, it is obviously fake.

The show has a lot of gags, which range from sexism, terrorism to even abortion! With family guy you rather like it a lot or dislike it a lot.

Content:

The famous cast list of Family Guy are Seth Mcfarlan who plays Peter Griffin the dad,he also plays Brian the Dog and he also plays the voice of Stewie Griffin the boy, Mila Kunis who plays Meg Griffin the daughter of the family, Seth Green who plays Chris Griffin the son of the family and Alex Borstein who plays Louis Griffin the mother of the family.

Seth Macfarlan was originally the first person to write it but throughout the episodes he gets ideas from the team of writers who are behind family guy. Family guy comes in series, each series takes around 9 month to make on average according to one of the sources of the company.

Meaning:

Family guy is the same set of charecters every epsisode, theres the main ones which appear but the odd few appear in new episodes they rather stay or just appear in some more of the episode in the future. The duration is on average 25 minutes a episode depending on how short they cut it. They sometimes have a double episode which they carry on onto the next episode instead of it being one long episode. There is some special effects in the series because it is all animated.

Production Process:

Each trailer of a new series every year of family guy shows mini clips in of the best scenes of that series and try and make it more appealing for others to watch. They make it more whacky every year and use a lot more jokes. For instance in the trailer below they make it like Peter is getting all his gags ready for the jokes and use a lot of special animated effects in it. This is a trailer of season 12 of Family Guy which came out last September 2013. The trailer gives you a couple of views throughout the full series of the show, it shows the wacky comedy and entertainment family guy gives off. There isn't any music to set a vibe to the trailer, because in this trailer it just shows scenes from the full series. The trailer  tries its best to make the viewers laugh and catch there eye to make sure they watch it when it comes out.

 

 

 



Competitors

There is thousands of Competitors out in the world, but the main competitors of News Corporation are:

Disney :- also The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with five business segments: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, consumer products and interactive media.

 

Viacom:- is home to the world's premier entertainment brands that connect with audiences through compelling content across television, motion picture, online and mobile platforms in over 160 countries and territories.




 Here is some competitors of Family Guy:


King of the hill

King of the Hill is an American adult animated sitcom created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels that ran from January 12, 1997, to May 6, 2010, on Fox. It centers on the Hills, a middle-class Methodist family in the fictional small town of Arlen, Texas. It attempts to retain a naturalistic approach, seeking humor in the conventional and mundane aspects of everyday life. Unlike other animated programs, plots were often cumulative, much like a prime-time drama. In addition, the show was known for its dramatic cliffhangers during season finales.





Bob's Burgers

Bob's Burgers is an American animated sitcom created by Loren Bouchard for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Belchers – parents Bob and Linda, and their children Tina, Gene, and Louise – who run a hamburger restaurant. The family was conceived by Bouchard after developing Home Movies for UPN.


Family guy is a established TV show and more well known than these 2 TV shows, Family guy has a very strong fan base, for instance they wrote one of the Characters off called Brian which is the talking dog, all the fans of family guy where unhappy and protested against it so they had to bring him back into the show. This shows how strong the fan base of family guy can be and the attachment fans have to some of the characters. Where if you look at king of the hill and bobs burgers there fan base is pretty smaller and they don't have that level of attachment yet. Bob's Burgers hasn't been a TV show for long it came out in 2011 so it wont be as big as Family Guy yet. With king of the hill, the show has been cancelled which shows that there wasn't enough fans following the show, unlike family guy which is still going. Family guy got made later than King of the Hill but has the same amount of seasons as the show, this shows the popularity of family guy and in comparison of King of the hill it has more longevity.  



Both of these TV shows are pretty similar to family guy because both of them both have a family, King of the hill is more similar because the have a pet dog, but with family guy there pet dog talks. Family guy was created before both of these shows, they are all owned by FOX. Both Family guy and King of the hill are making a common man because they both have a dog and they say a dog is a mans best friend, King of the hill is being more stereo typical by making the male character have a can of beer in his hand.              

Products/Timeline

 

News Corporation is an American multinational mass media corporation headquartered in New York City. They own loads of big well know companies such as The Sun, Fox, The Sunday Times, VOGUE, The Daily Telegraph and so on. But our main focus is them owning FOX. FOX is an American commercial broadcasting television network that is owned by the Fox Entertainment Group division of 21st Century Fox. I am focusing on Family guy which is owned by FOX, but FOX have lots of world famous shows such as The Simspons, Glee, My name is Earl, Prison Break and How I Met your mother.

Family guy was created in the 1990s by a American actor, voice actor, animator, screenwriter, producer, film director, cartoonist, activist, comedian, singer, and television host called Seth MacFarlane who was born 26th of October 1973. After college MacFarlane was hired at Hanna-Barbera based on the writing content of The Life of Larry, rather than on cartooning ability. He was one of only a few people hired by the company solely based on writing talent. He worked as an animator and writer for Cartoon Network's Cartoon Cartoons series.

Although MacFarlane enjoyed working at Hanna-Barbera, he felt his real calling was for prime-time animation, which would allow a much edgier style of humor. He first pitched Family Guy to Fox during his tenure at Hanna-Barbera. A development executive for Hanna-Barbera, who was trying to get back into the prime-time business at the time, introduced MacFarlane to Leslie Collins and Mike Darnell, heads of the alternative comedy department at Fox.

After the success of King of the Hill in 1997, MacFarlane called Collins once more to ask about a possible second pitch for the series. The company offered the young writer a strange deal: Fox gave him a budget of $50,000 to produce a pilot that could lead to a series.

Family guy is now onto its 12th season and was a success for Seth. The shows are broadcasted on the English channel BBC 3 and two American channels called FOX and Adult Swim. The Main cast members are who play the family voices are; Seth MacFarlane who plays the voices of Peter Griffin the dad of the family, Stewie Griffin the baby of the family and Brian Griffin the families dog. Alex Borstein who plays the voice of Louis Griffin the mother of the family. Seth Green who plays the voice Chris Griffin the teenage son of the family. Mila Kunis who plays the voice of Meg Griffin the daughter of the Family.

Family guy had a video game released in 2006 called 'Family Guy Video game!' which was published by 2k Games with the Genre of Action-Adventure. Family Guy Video Game! received mixed reviews. Aggregating review websites Game Rankings and Metacritic gave the Xbox version 56.89% and 53/100. the PlayStation 2 version 51.06% and 50/100 and the PlayStation Portable version 50.80% and 51/100.