Radio Production Evaluation

1. Radio Production Evaluation

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Our final media product consisted of a local five minute news bulletin. The conventions in our media product in which we used were, five different sections of the news appealing to different audiences, we used voxpops, outside interviews and jingles. We tried to challenge existing media products such as, Radio 1, Signal One and XFM by having four different presenters for each section of the news, such as headlines, sport, travel and entertainment. By doing this it created interest within the speech as there was variation. Whereas in other news bulletins like, radio 1 only two presenters were used one for the headlines and weather and the other for sport. We decided to challenge this convention to create a USP for our radio news bulletin. However other aspects of our news bulletin such as the order of the piece stayed traditional and similar to the other radio news bulletins. For example XFM started with the main stories first and finished with travel, just like ours.

3. How does your media product represent particular social groups? Our media product targeted both males and females in the demographic classification Group E. This is the lowest subsistence level and generally consists of students. The audience demographics are commonly measured through these factors, occupation, age, education, gender and religion. Our media product represented this particular social group by using news stories that would interest a younger audience. For example Glastonbury tickets selling out and Feeder playing at the M club in Crewe. The jingles played throughout the piece were youthful and lively also gaining the younger audiences interest because its fun. Along with the headlines and main news stories our bulletin also involved entertainment news which definitely targeted our target audience because the majority of students are interested in television and film. Another section to our media piece was sport, which we stereotyped the young male listeners would gain interest from. Lastly was the travel news we decided to feature this in our radio piece because we found out through research such as, questionnaires that most people listen to the radio in the car and also since the lowest band in our target audience was seventeen it meant that they could be driving themselves. We stereotyped our listeners by focusing on the stereotypical student image, by doing this we have excluded older listeners from our production.

4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? Bauer Media will distribute our media product because it is already a leading company in distributing media forms like, magazines and radio. We chose to use Bauer Media because they distribute radio channels such as, Kerrang! radio, Kiss, Magic, Rock FM and Smash Hits radio. We felt this important because these are quite popular and successful stations, and hopefully continue ours in this popular streak. Bauer own stations that have a similar target audience and therefore would be an appropriate company to approach.

5. Who would be the audience for your media product? The target audience for our media product is aged 17-22. We chose this student age group because it was easier for us to relate to as we fit this group too. We also thought about what news we would want to listen to and chose the stories which we thought that specific age group would be interested in. We targeted a local audience in the region of South Cheshire. There was no specific gender decided as we thought we would gain more listeners if we catered for both males and females. The only negative about this was it meant we couldn’t stereotype on a large scale as it then wouldn’t appeal to everyone.

6. How did you attract/address your audience? We attracted and appealed to our audience by creating a flowing fast paced structure. For example our bulletin ran in order of importance having the main headlines feature first and then the travel last. This was effective because it gave an indication to the audience on how to react, as generally all news bulletins follow the importance rule, therefore if our piece went against this convention it would confuse the listeners. Radio is a blind medium meaning the presenters have to describe details visually and to tell stories as though they are talking to one person. We had to be careful when writing the script to not write too formally so that when being read out it didn’t sound scripted. At first this was challenging but through lots of rehearsal our piece sounded natural. It was a long process deciding which jingles and beds to incorporate into the piece, as it meant we had to listen to lots of sounds to decide which would be appropriate. In the end we went with an upbeat bed to carry the pace along and a couple of different jingles for the different sections of the news, such as entertainment and sport. The news stories used were suited for the local and national news and our target audience. It was quite difficult to find stories to fit these requirements but having looked through local newspapers such as the ‘Crewe Chronicle’ it meant we could discover these articles. We also looked on the radio1 website to look for recent interesting entertainment stories, which is where we found the Glastonbury story.

7. What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product? I have learnt and developed new technological skills such as, recording voxpops, editing radio, the relationship between all the sounds, structure and mic techniques. Whilst recording voxpops I had to set sound levels to make sure that the voice would be loud and clear enough to understand. Learning how to edit the radio piece was quite challenging as it was something completely new on a computer software I had never used before, but eventually I mastered the skill and became confident in using it. What I now know about editing which I didn’t know before is that whilst editing the piece I learnt how to cut down a voxpop and edit into our production with a sound bed in the background.I also learnt the importance of radio structure and relationship between sounds i.e. a serious news story about people dying would not work well with a fast tempo bed.

8. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? The preliminary task of writing a script for ‘Funky Profile’ feels now quite amateur, looking back and comparing it with our new radio piece. The differences were of masses for example, the script was very formal and sounded quite forced when read aloud. Whereas with the new script it flowed better and definatleysounded more like a conversation, which was the style we aimed for. Back then we only knew the basics, for example writing a script and talking into the microphone, whereas now that’s completely changed my knowledge has broadly widened. By scripting the process I have learnt how important it is to be fully confident with the news stories, so the confidence comes across in the radio piece. I now know the importance of sound beds, microphone levels, editing, writing the script and choosing subjects to discuss, showing my production skills have developed. Especially when creating voxpops, as I know now how to set the levels and choose the distance in which to speak into the microphone, so it gives a clear sound.