Radio Production Evaluation

1. Radio Production Evaluation By Harriet Thompson

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media use? • From various textual analyses that we conducted it is clear that our radio production follows similar forms and conventions to those of real media products. Throughout these textual analyses we noticed a very clear news structure in a basic format: hard news, soft news, sport news, travel and weather news. Of course, we adapted our radio production to that which would suit our target audience, thus taking one of the news structures used by the international radio station, Radio One, as this was a radio station that appeals to a similar target audience. Within this the same structure as shown above was followed but included entertainment news. Therefore we chose for our structure to be: main headlines, hard news, soft news, entertainment news, sport news, travel updates and weather information within this we also integrated voxpops and studio interviews adding to the overall interest of the stories for our target audience. Differing from the structure of Radio One is the travel news, as this is only included at the two peak times of travelling: 9am and 5pm. We included this piece because of a textual analysis conducted on Signal one, a local radio station, incorporating both local and national news features to create our production suited to our locality and target audience. Our media product also uses the use of music through the forms of jingles, beds and stings, we only use two beds throughout our piece, one we keep all the way through which is not a distraction from our stories and the other for the sport which relates to this section due to the whistle at the beginning which is associated with sport. As well as using different beds we each also had our own specific section we would read, Hannah was the main presenter, reading the main headlines and stories in a serious tone due to the stories being hard news, Abii presented the entertainment news in an upbeat way to match our target audience’s attitudes to this topic, Rosie was the sports presenter and also read this news in an upbeat and light hearted way and I read the travel and weather, once again in a way similar to Rosie and Abii’s. When we were each signalling a change in presenter we spoke in a different way again so that the audience could differentiate between the tones of the stories we were reading. We kept our language in a slightly formal way in relation to the type of news stories we were saying but not too serious to the point where it would cause a listener to tune out after only just tuning in to our broadcast!

3. How does your media product represent particular social groups? • Our radio production addresses to both genders aged seventeen to twenty two year olds in the E demographic profile. We used a stereotype of this age group which we felt would suit our radio production, many of these stereotypes were easy to decide as we ourselves abide to them, for example we decided that our audience would like music, quite obviously because they are listening to the radio, the male audience would like sport – therefore we would feature a sport bulletin, that both genders like entertainment news, based on the stereotype that the majority of late teens to twenty two year olds would go out to places such as music festivals and cinemas. Finally we chose to feature travel news because we decided that the majority of listeners would be driving and would therefore want to know up to date travel reports near their area. Throughout all of these decisions we have been biased towards the majority, catering for them and not the minority; however we have in some ways subverted stereotypes due to our production being for a local radio station. For example we looked at music that was local not national which could imply that our target audience is only interested in local music, not national! We presented our listeners with a traditional version of the world news as this contains human interest stories which our mainstream audience can relate to.

4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? • Throughout the production process I thought that our media product would be broadcast through Bauer Media due to this institution having their own various radio stations already and due to our media product being presented to a ‘gap in the market’ of this age group. Bauer media appeals to a wide range of audience via radio, apart from our specific target audience of students and young adults aged 17-22, therefore making Bauer appropriate because we would fill the gap in the market. Another reason why Bauer would be appropriate is due to it having many interests in the media that are made for our target audience, for example, Bauer own the radio station ‘Heat radio’ who specialise particularly in celebrity gossip which could be said to be an interest of our female target audience but more specifically the radio station ‘KISS’ caters to our target audience’s interest in music. There would however be competition in the form of Radio 1, but due to us being a local station this would still mean that we have an acceptable amount of listeners.

5. Who would be the audience for your media product? • The target audience for our media product would be 17-22 year olds in the E demographic profile which is students.

6. How did you attract/address your audience? • In our media product there are many features which were designed to appeal to our target audience. We followed a simplistic structure which was fast paced and up to date. We ensured that within our script we only mentioned things that were relevant to our audience, the use of colloquial language giving our production an element of realism and with our studio interviews and voxpops we initially wrote out an idea of what the interviewee would say but asked them not to read it word for word, also adding to the reality of our piece making it sound more natural. The choice of jingles and beds was a decision that had to be based on the match between our stories and how they would sound with our bed underneath this was also a decision based upon our results from our questionnaires, when asked if people like background music in the news, everybody agreed that they did but the majority felt that there were too many jingles therefore we kept the amount of jingles used to a minimum. In terms of the choice of stories in relation to our audience, we found this information from our questionnaire, where when asked: ‘What are the most popular things to hear about in the news?’ the response was: local events, entertainment, technology and sport. Therefore we noted this and began researching in the local Crewe Chronicle for stories on local events that we found of interest due us being part of our target audience; we also gathered local sport and entertainment stories from this source. Once we had done so, we then began to do the same for national news, once again using newspapers and magazines that had national stories in them but also stories off the internet related to these topics.

7. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? • There are many factors of the technological side of radio production that I have learnt throughout constructing our radio production. One of which is how to carry out a voxpop, I learned that you need to consider matter such as volume, microphone distance that it should be about 4” away, you should only move the microphone when the question/answer is finished - that being closer to your interviewee to make this easier, record too much information so that you can choose and to ensure that you use an enthusiastic tone. I have also learnt what is involved in the overall editing process that is used in constructing a radio production, in many of our voxpops we recorded a lengthy amount of the interviewee’s topic so that we could choose the relevant section we wanted to use, by integrating factors such as the bed, the stings and jingles and our own recorded elements was something I particularly enjoyed constructing as it gave me an insight into the editing side of the production of radio broadcasting. During the recording process I learnt that you must first do a sound level check before recording to enable your voice to sound the way it is intended to on the recording. In terms of editing I learnt many new things through the use of the program Adobe Audition, which I did not know how to use before, elements of editing our production such as how to make the voice sound fuller, by using the voice equaliser, where to place each recording so that it is constructed in the way we wanted it to be and how to take out parts of interviews which we did not need, by deleting the sound bite.

8. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? • From my preliminary task, ‘Funky Profile’ I know a great deal more about what makes a radio production good. For example, my preliminary task was a basic two minute recording constructed of questions and answers on a chosen topic, in order to make a successful production I know that it is solely focused on what your audience wants to hear and what they are interested in, not you! However to some extent with our production this was beneficial as we, producing the news product, are all members of our target audience therefore we could be definite about our stories. I also learned about what is important to consider when writing for radio news, factors such as the very first sentence of the broadcast must be straight to the point and interesting due to radio being a medium that can be tuned into or out of at any given time by the listener. Each story must be signposted to make it apparent that a new topic is being introduced – this was something we had to practise greatly to make a clear difference between one story and another, particularly when changing from the hard news stories to the soft news stories. Also the significance of our stories to our audience, as previously mentioned we included the entertainment news section in our production as this particularly appeals to our target audience. I have also learnt from the progression from the preliminary task is the importance of the six fundamentals of radio and their relevance to our production. Every radio production takes these fundamentals into account as did we, to relate to the immediacy of radio we ensured that our broadcast was of a fast pace, giving our audience exactly what they needed to hear, the concept of humanity was covered through the use of voxpops of everyday people, all radio news plays on the audience’s imagination, to help us to do this throughout writing our stories we read them aloud and tried to match the picture to the news we were saying, simplicity we used no hyperbole and used one main voice to one main bed to avoid distraction, we fulfilled the hunger of radio by giving up to date contemporary travel news which was a similar aspect with the specialist production of our news broadcast as this was specific to our target audience as previously mentioned.