After visiting and examining the PBS Web site, I was able to conclude that it is an extremely successful entertainment and educational site. The Web site has won many substantial awards, including the prestigious "Webbie Award" in 1998 and 1999. According to a recent survey, fifty-six percent of users at the PBS Web site are male and sixty percent are between the ages of eighteen and forty-four. Forty-four percent of the Web site users have children and fifty-seven percent make online purchases. (Gallup/Plaw Release: Survey of 40,000 Internet Users. Fall 1998.)
The design of the Web site is very bright and appealing to the eye. Its layout is inviting and easy to navigate. Its design is consistent through all pages. There are many graphics including, photographs, illustrations, and animated buttons and GIFs. These graphics are placed in an orderly fashion and do not create a cluttered appearance. The site has its own search engine which assists in navigating throughout the site.
The PBS Web site relies on sponsors for funding. One of its significant sponsors is Visa. The majority of pages on the site have a Visa banner going across the top. The advertising is very minimal and no where near overwhelming as some sites tend to be.
The site consists of eleven different main sections. Each section is unique and consists of articles, games, links, and reviews. The majority of links offered are internal links. All of the links are relevent and up to date. Of all the sections, the PBS Kids section appears to be the most comprehensive. It is the most visited section on the site with more than 560,000 visits per month. (Doubleclick.) This section really takes advantage of what multimedia has to offer. When you enter the site music begins to play, and animated graphics begin to move. The site contains games, an interactive coloring book, and ideas for arts and crafts projects. It also has links to all the children's shows that are on PBS including, Sesame Street, Barney, and Thomas the Tank. Its design is extremely colorful, playful, and intriguing.
Another main section in the PBS Web site is called "TeacherSource." Its articles offer teachers advice on incorporating cable, video, and the Internet into their classrooms and lessons. The "Indie Scene" section concerns independent films and videos. It includes film reviews, a schedule of movies, and interviews with filmmakers. The site has two different news sections, " Online Newshour" and "News & Views.
If PBS doesn’t do it, who will? Cable, yes, to a limited extent, but PBS will always reach a larger audience than an infinite number of cable networks with PBS-type programming. Without government support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and ultimately the Public Broadcasting Service itself, PBS would survive. Society, however, would suffer as the loss of one-fifth of the Service’s operating budget leads to cutbacks in programming and ultimately decreased positive external effects from the network. That’s why government intervention--an annual subsidy for PBS from the federal government--is so important: not because the network would disappear, but because it would fail to provide the socially optimal variety and quantity of programming.
The design of the website is appealing, although it may seem a bit over-whelming at first glance. Upon review, the design provides little written information regarding the actual purpose of the publication, but does include many easy to navigate hyper-links on various topics that may be very appealing to a person needing specific information on one topic.
The design adopted in the development of a website is a major factor that determines if the website meets its mandate or not. The design of a website is what attracts users to the site and even keeps them for prolonged periods of time on the website. This report gives a critique of The Times online website. This site can be categorized as an informative site. The mandate of this site is to provide information to users on a broad category of topics. These include sports, general news, community events, entertainment, classifieds among other categories of information. The critique presented in this report focuses on a number of aspects of website design. These aspects include searchability, navigation, design, interactivity and the content on the website. The findings are as discussed in the sections that follow.
Suggestion: Graphic gives appeal to an otherwise boring page. However, according to Duckett, “images should make your website more attractive and professional.” Also, according to the lecture on good design practices, an image should give you clear details about the image. This will give the viewer more incentive to continue to
The internet is our modern source for news media; the importance of the newspaper has not only declined, it is in a sense, obsolete. We now turn to the internet for opinions, news, and entertainment. Even though the way in which we consume information (PBS) has changed, the importance of an unrestricted and watchful media has not changed. (Magleby, Light, & Nemacheck, 2010)
...do not want to spend the money to air educational children’s television programming knowing they do not have the audience and will only lose money. In addition, broadcasters are facing practical issues in their efforts to comply with these regulations. For example, a single thirty-minute episode from Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego or Ghostwriter from PBS costs as much as $390,000 bringing this cost more than most non-educational programs. Another problem occurs when a broadcaster spends the money to air “educational” television shows and the FCC decides that show is no longer deemed as providing necessary educational content. The broadcasters also contend that many Americans subscribe to cable or satellite television where there are many channels and children will opt for programs on Nickelodeon or Disney over what the broadcasting station has to offer.
Next, design is an important consideration. Website can provide the user with useful information but if the design and layout of the website is not attractive, it is useless. The graphic design plays an important role in attracting user to navigate the website. As for the website of Apple Malaysia, the design is simple yet
This paper will concentrate on two web sites. The fundamental difference between the two is how much one advertises, and how the other sets the viewer in the right direction. The better of the web sites, in my opinion, is the one without all the bells and whistles.
Part of the website’s visual appeal is the color scheme. The background for the website is white making it easier for the audience to focus on the important information such as the contact information and resources, which is accentuated with purple ribbons and text. The purple is
In this web site, for design and aesthetics, I also agree that there are several point of it such as, layout interface, graphics, attractive video and all of this useful to customer to get more information and attract customer to buy a ...
Dunn, J. (1999). Taming the Tube: Television Access and Literacy [Electronic version]. Home Education Magazine, March-April. Retrieved May 3, 2004 from http://www.home-ed-magazine.com/HEM/issue_index.html.
The author of the broadcasting site is Katherine Lauderdale, sponsored by donations given by the community. Pbs.org staff can be contacted through mail in Arlington, VA. Pbs.org is an educational site were children may obtain new knowledge, all information put into the site
Golden Screen Cinemas (GSC) websites is categorized as an entertainment website. At the homepage, design of the websites contains flash movement, high g...
PBS contends that the television series "is designed to encourage curiosity and to stimulate imagination" in young children: to help them learn. The creators of the program, which began in Britain, conducted research with children, nursery school teachers, and linguists. The co-creator and writer, Andrew Davenport, has a degree in Speech Sciences. "Teletubbies" makes use of bright colors, music, repetition, and a slow pace, because this is how young children learn, according to the current research on education. Michael Brunton, in an article in Time, said that "people are missing the point" when they criticize the repetition and hear the baby-talk of the teletubbies. "Teletubbies is in fact closely modeled around the latest theories of speech that identify patterns of movement, a sing-song voice,...repetition and social interaction as key building blocks." These views have been widely publicized, as has been the idea that young children learn the most, and most rapidly, before the age of three. PBS also...
The website is very organized and has important features to provide information “accessible, usable and relevant to a variety of people in a variety of settings” as Gurak and Lannon pointed out. (Gurak & Lannon, 2007, p.4).