Documentary Commission Unit: Project Update

Death on the High Street - Pitch

Since the Internet became accessible to the public in 1991 technology itself has boomed. Not much happened in the 1990s apart from turning cassette tapes into Compact Discs but since 2000 there has been a conscious effort to change the computing world. In the space of ten years computers have gone from being the size of a room to being able to fit in your pocket. It might not seem much but this advance in technology has had a major knock-on effect on the typical high street.

This documentary is part of the channel Yesterday series “The Noughties” and will examine the idea that to be part of the ever-expanding Internet, in The Noughties internationally known stores decided to go “online” after the success of Amazon’s launch in 1995 and eBay’s launch 1996. This has lead to an increase of online shoppers and a decrease of shoppers on the high street. It can also be considered that due to the recession in 2008 many shops converted to online so as to not lose customers. In this documentary we will be looking at whether the birth of online shopping has caused the death of the high street or whether it was the recession, or could it even be a bit of both.

We will look at HMV as an example of a high street shop that was struggling before the recession but found a way of rebooting its shop sales but has also been an online store since 2005. We will use Woolworths as an example of a high street shop that was so severely affected by the recession that all the stores closed in January 2009 but in February 2009 saw the launch of its online store. We will use Margate as an example of a town that was devastated by the recession seeing rows of shops close and have still yet to be re-opened.

The funding for this documentary will come from the online store Woolworths as they were affected by the recession but have found a new lease of life as an online store.

Current documentaries have yet to focus on the idea that the death of the high street could have been caused by two different things whereas this documentary will be covering both aspects with interviews from both the shop owners and the shoppers themselves.