Question Time Youth (Working Title)

Last week the murder of the young soldier Lee Rigby occurred in Woolwich sparking controversy and debate across the country but more importantly amongst me and my classmates. The discussion and how informed and uninformed some people were, led to the inspiration for drawing up plans to create a Question-Time-style youth debate programme. The aim of creating this programme is to stir debate and inform our audience.
I believe that there is a gap in the market for my type of product, there is only one other programme which is dedicated to giving young people a chance to voice their opinion called Free Speech.
I think the biggest hurdle in creating a successful program is engaging the audience. As my audience is 16-24 year olds the best way for them to see my product is for it to be on the internet. The problem is that the traditional Question Time format is an hour long, which is too long and would disengage my target audience. To rectify the issue one solution could be to cut down the hour into 5-7 minute topics and then upload the show in chunks. Another significant issue is organising a panel together. The purpose of the panel on QuestionTime is to see the opinions of people in a position of status or power that the audience knows. However to have different of young people in a position of power or status every week would be difficult. To combat this we could offer the chance to apply to be on the panel each week.
Although we are modelling ourselves on the Question Time format, obviously we need to adapt it so it is appealing to young people. One idea would be to have a limit on the amount of time the panel has to discuss the topic. This would keep the show flowing as well as being able to get through a larger number of topics.
I’ve watched Question Time for a long time now, so actually creating a spin-off show to talk about issues that are relevant to me is exciting. This would be very easy to make and produce, the real challenge is getting the target audience excited about it. I feel that there isn’t really another programme on the market quite like mine, however the reason may be that there isn’t a large amount of young people that are interested in learning about the world around them. I believe that I can create something that will get young people as interested as I am about issues affecting them.