Media Theorist, Stuart Hall, suggests there are three ways my audience will be able to analyse and interpret my media text. These are:
Preferred Reading
Negotiated Reading
Oppositional Reading
Preferred Reading is when the audience agrees with my piece and shares its views. It is the most dominant reading and would be expected of my target audience who enjoy my mix of serious and light-hearted stories, while taking something away from the text after listening.
Negotiated Reading is when the audience partly agrees with me but sometimes resists and modifies. These readers may still enjoy listening to my radio piece but could think of ways to improve it.
Oppositional Reading is when the media consumer understands my text but does not agree. They may not think my stories fit the mise en scene or just not enjoy the flow of my work at all. It is this audience I will take the most feedback from as I try to improve my work.
I think it is important to understand how my audience will analyse my work as I then have a good idea on how to present it to them.
I think most of my audience will read my work though 'Negotiated Reading' as it is news based and topical. They are likely to have their own strong views on what should be presented on the news and how. There are many different ways to present the news and this is why there are newspapers aimed at many different target audiences such as 'The Sun' for the working class who want a light-hearted and over dramatised approach and 'The Observer' for factual middle-class reads.
David Morley on the other hand wrote: 'audiences, like producers of messages, must also undertake a specific kind of "work" in order to read meaningfully what is transmitted' in his 1980 text 'The Nationwide Audience'. Morley suggests that the audience will not just initially analyse a media text in one of three ways as Stuart Hall suggests, but "work" through it to make their own decision. They may listen to a media text such as my radio work, go away and talk to friends via the 'Two Step Flow' theory and reach a new point of view.
I believe how a media consumer analyses a text depends on the individual- but I will take all varieties of feedback, as I did with my questionnaires, and try and improve my work accordingly.
Sunday, 5 December 2010
Sunday, 21 November 2010
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
How I Contributed To The Task
I contributed to the task in numerous ways during our group project. I think it was very important that we all put in individual effort as well as productive team-work to come away with the best results.
This begins by doing a wide range of individual planning and research, then bringing this solo work to the team to discuss and improve. We all participated well with this, for example I would go away and make notes on a local radio station such as ‘96.5 Bolton FM’ and compare my findings to what Liam had discovered about a national station such as ‘Heart FM’ so we can analyse key differences and which aspects we want to use for our own station. I would say how 'local radio presenters connect with their audience better, as they deal with local topics and in this normally have presenters from the local area' and Liam would come back with 'but national stations have more advanced software for a sharper editing process' and we'd take the positives from both situations to enhance our own work.
With our preliminary task we all took on major roles to master individual skills to bring to the team. I focused on presenting skills with microphone work. As we were still learning, there was lots of room for improving after our preliminary, but as a learning curve this greatly helped us. I learnt I needed to speak softer into the mike and stop static sounds and ‘dead air’ moments.
As me moved onto the final piece I wanted a more all-round approach to the work so began focusing on editing as well as the recording. We used Audacity, which I spent time practising on and learning how to cut and move sound segments. Again we all put in individual work, but by bringing these ideas to the team meetings we had a lot of group input and evolution of our ideas.
During our research for news stories I frequently watched the news and checked stories online for inspiration. I decided we wanted a mix of light-hearted and serious, powerful stories that would interest our target audience of teenagers to young adults, who are at the stage of enjoying ‘fun’ stories while having moral obligations to care about the world. I suggested to my group we cover the John Terry affair and Hati stories, as the juxtaposition of stories was exactly what we were looking for.
From here we moved onto the recording stages of our final piece, as I stated, I wanted to much more involved with the editing and technical stages of this and so I was. I became a more confident user of Audacity and introduced snippets of jingle in-between headlines. I also kept presenting, and felt my voice was more professional to a news show. I studied the presenting skills of professionals such as Trevor McDonald and spoke softer, yet with authority, into the mike. I think tone was very important as we needed the balance between ‘jokey’ attitudes enjoyed by our young target audience and serious and respectful voices to justify our serious stories.
I believe I contributed well to the task and was part of an effective team that pulled all our ideas together to create our radio segment.
This begins by doing a wide range of individual planning and research, then bringing this solo work to the team to discuss and improve. We all participated well with this, for example I would go away and make notes on a local radio station such as ‘96.5 Bolton FM’ and compare my findings to what Liam had discovered about a national station such as ‘Heart FM’ so we can analyse key differences and which aspects we want to use for our own station. I would say how 'local radio presenters connect with their audience better, as they deal with local topics and in this normally have presenters from the local area' and Liam would come back with 'but national stations have more advanced software for a sharper editing process' and we'd take the positives from both situations to enhance our own work.
With our preliminary task we all took on major roles to master individual skills to bring to the team. I focused on presenting skills with microphone work. As we were still learning, there was lots of room for improving after our preliminary, but as a learning curve this greatly helped us. I learnt I needed to speak softer into the mike and stop static sounds and ‘dead air’ moments.
As me moved onto the final piece I wanted a more all-round approach to the work so began focusing on editing as well as the recording. We used Audacity, which I spent time practising on and learning how to cut and move sound segments. Again we all put in individual work, but by bringing these ideas to the team meetings we had a lot of group input and evolution of our ideas.
During our research for news stories I frequently watched the news and checked stories online for inspiration. I decided we wanted a mix of light-hearted and serious, powerful stories that would interest our target audience of teenagers to young adults, who are at the stage of enjoying ‘fun’ stories while having moral obligations to care about the world. I suggested to my group we cover the John Terry affair and Hati stories, as the juxtaposition of stories was exactly what we were looking for.
From here we moved onto the recording stages of our final piece, as I stated, I wanted to much more involved with the editing and technical stages of this and so I was. I became a more confident user of Audacity and introduced snippets of jingle in-between headlines. I also kept presenting, and felt my voice was more professional to a news show. I studied the presenting skills of professionals such as Trevor McDonald and spoke softer, yet with authority, into the mike. I think tone was very important as we needed the balance between ‘jokey’ attitudes enjoyed by our young target audience and serious and respectful voices to justify our serious stories.
I believe I contributed well to the task and was part of an effective team that pulled all our ideas together to create our radio segment.
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Evaluation
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
After much research of many media institutions and the radio shows they play, I have concluded that a local light-hearted radio station such as BBC Oxford or Jack FM would distribute our radio show. It is common for local stations to broadcast local dialects (and we are all native to Oxfordshire) This became apparent during my research into 95.6 Bolton FM. And we mix local and national stories, such as our coverage of the local mans crocodile farm contrasted with our coverage of Haiti.
http://www.jackfm.co.uk/
This link to Jack FM will allow you to listen to the similarities of our broadcast and theirs. These local stations build better relationships with their listeners as they present to a smaller number of people who get more input via phone-ins and competitions.
Who would be the audience for your media product? And how does it represent particular social groups?
Our target audience will be teenagers to young adults, 15 to 24. Most who I assume will be local to Oxfordshire. We represent young Oxfordians by being them ourselves. A lot of our stories, such as the John Terry affair are light hearted and relevant to popular culture. This is entwined with serious stories that interest and challenge our audience’s views. Despite this, as a news segment we would hope to have a large variety of audience to address due to most people wanting the news to keep up to date with the world. This is proven by ‘The news at Ten’ being one of the most viewed programs in history and that news has spread to more niche markets such as children with ‘News Round’ and music lovers with ‘Kerrang News’. The Cultivation Theory tells us how the media is such an important source of information that consumers find it ultimately impossible to escape it's gradual encroachment on their everyday lives- this again will increase our viewing figures.
How did you attract/address your audience?
If our radio segment was a daily show, we would attract our audience through local mediated advertisement. There is no point spending millions of pounds on national advertisement for a local radio show, so I would focus on Poster and possible local TV/Radio Adverts in the Oxfordshire area.
Our Jingle will also attract our audiences. It has been theorised that a person can become attracted to a jingle if they hear it enough time though the mediated Syringe Theory. An example of this would be an individual recognising the theme music to Eastender and feeling an urge to go watch. Our jingle would work in a similar way for our audience, if they are browsing through radio stations and get a blast of our jingle, they will stop and listen in. This will fundamentally raise our profile.
Furthermore I would attract audience through advertising, especially through the Syringe Theory of playing our adverts locally over and over and the Two Step Flow Theory of allowing our media consumers to discuss our show amongst themselves and hopefully attract new consumers to tune in.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Through the construction of our radio piece we came into contact with many new technologies and media instruments.
The key program we used was the computer program ‘Audacity’. Created by Dominic Mazzoni, this simple yet effective program recorded our voices through microphones and then allowed us to edit. The editing process consisted to cutting and lengthening voice segments and overlapping them with backing sounds such as quieter music or ‘buzzing and disjointed' effect used in our Haiti story to represent technical problems that would occur while broadcasting a piece of news from another country.
Over the course of our project I have learnt to master Audacity as well as other instruments such as the microphones, handheld voice recorders and even video cameras when filming an evaluation video.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I and my group have come a long way since our preliminary. In our preliminary we were still learning how to use programs such as Audacity and had technical difficulties in the editing phases. While speaking into the mike we were too loud and didn’t do enough to stop disturbances. I think as a learning curve the preliminary can still be seen as a success as it did teach us the basics and pushed us to achieve and do better for our final piece.
Our final piece is much better flowing with many more technical skills such as an improved jingle, sound effects between headlines and our ‘buzzing’ effect in our Haiti voxpop. Our presenting skills are also much improved, with our voice tones suited to a News environment.
As a group our time management excelled from our preliminary, as we met up frequently in own free time to record and edit.
I think the progress we made can be put down to our excelled effort and understanding of preparation as we shared ideas, researched stories and scripted; our recording as we were more experienced and progressed through trial and error and finally our postproduction, spending a lot of time editing on Audacity to achieve our final piece.
After much research of many media institutions and the radio shows they play, I have concluded that a local light-hearted radio station such as BBC Oxford or Jack FM would distribute our radio show. It is common for local stations to broadcast local dialects (and we are all native to Oxfordshire) This became apparent during my research into 95.6 Bolton FM. And we mix local and national stories, such as our coverage of the local mans crocodile farm contrasted with our coverage of Haiti.
http://www.jackfm.co.uk/
This link to Jack FM will allow you to listen to the similarities of our broadcast and theirs. These local stations build better relationships with their listeners as they present to a smaller number of people who get more input via phone-ins and competitions.
Who would be the audience for your media product? And how does it represent particular social groups?
Our target audience will be teenagers to young adults, 15 to 24. Most who I assume will be local to Oxfordshire. We represent young Oxfordians by being them ourselves. A lot of our stories, such as the John Terry affair are light hearted and relevant to popular culture. This is entwined with serious stories that interest and challenge our audience’s views. Despite this, as a news segment we would hope to have a large variety of audience to address due to most people wanting the news to keep up to date with the world. This is proven by ‘The news at Ten’ being one of the most viewed programs in history and that news has spread to more niche markets such as children with ‘News Round’ and music lovers with ‘Kerrang News’. The Cultivation Theory tells us how the media is such an important source of information that consumers find it ultimately impossible to escape it's gradual encroachment on their everyday lives- this again will increase our viewing figures.
How did you attract/address your audience?
If our radio segment was a daily show, we would attract our audience through local mediated advertisement. There is no point spending millions of pounds on national advertisement for a local radio show, so I would focus on Poster and possible local TV/Radio Adverts in the Oxfordshire area.
Our Jingle will also attract our audiences. It has been theorised that a person can become attracted to a jingle if they hear it enough time though the mediated Syringe Theory. An example of this would be an individual recognising the theme music to Eastender and feeling an urge to go watch. Our jingle would work in a similar way for our audience, if they are browsing through radio stations and get a blast of our jingle, they will stop and listen in. This will fundamentally raise our profile.
Furthermore I would attract audience through advertising, especially through the Syringe Theory of playing our adverts locally over and over and the Two Step Flow Theory of allowing our media consumers to discuss our show amongst themselves and hopefully attract new consumers to tune in.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Through the construction of our radio piece we came into contact with many new technologies and media instruments.
The key program we used was the computer program ‘Audacity’. Created by Dominic Mazzoni, this simple yet effective program recorded our voices through microphones and then allowed us to edit. The editing process consisted to cutting and lengthening voice segments and overlapping them with backing sounds such as quieter music or ‘buzzing and disjointed' effect used in our Haiti story to represent technical problems that would occur while broadcasting a piece of news from another country.
Over the course of our project I have learnt to master Audacity as well as other instruments such as the microphones, handheld voice recorders and even video cameras when filming an evaluation video.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I and my group have come a long way since our preliminary. In our preliminary we were still learning how to use programs such as Audacity and had technical difficulties in the editing phases. While speaking into the mike we were too loud and didn’t do enough to stop disturbances. I think as a learning curve the preliminary can still be seen as a success as it did teach us the basics and pushed us to achieve and do better for our final piece.
Our final piece is much better flowing with many more technical skills such as an improved jingle, sound effects between headlines and our ‘buzzing’ effect in our Haiti voxpop. Our presenting skills are also much improved, with our voice tones suited to a News environment.
As a group our time management excelled from our preliminary, as we met up frequently in own free time to record and edit.
I think the progress we made can be put down to our excelled effort and understanding of preparation as we shared ideas, researched stories and scripted; our recording as we were more experienced and progressed through trial and error and finally our postproduction, spending a lot of time editing on Audacity to achieve our final piece.
Audience Review
I created this questionnaire so we could get feedback from our audience. It is very helpful to see how people react to our show and to hear their opinions. Here is an example of an original questionnaire that I have put online, emailed to people and handed out hard copies at school, and one that is filled out, I had emailed to me by Ryan Banks who listened to our show.
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Recording + Editing
After our initial recording sessions we continued to record on a regular basis, this took several sessions to do a good job, but we found the time useful and rewarding. In our group we all picked certain jobs for recording, me and Liam became main News Readers while Ruhul took charge of vox-pops and editing. As well as this I took a key interest in the recording as I wanted to learn the new skill and be as involved in the final piece as I possibly could. The Editing system on Audacity was simple yet effective and involved cutting and moving sound-bites as we worked to make the piece flow as well as possible.
As a key news reader I felt I needed to take inspiration from professional news readers in the same way we initially took inspiration from professional radio shows. The most experienced and well practised one I could think of was Sir Trevor McDonald, so I researched him:
‘He was promoted in 1992 as the sole presenter of News at Ten, where he became one of the best known faces on British television screens. A year later in 1993, he was awarded an OBE in the Queen's honours list. McDonald stayed with ITN when News at Ten was axed in 1999, moving to present the new ITV Evening News. News at Ten was briefly re-launched in 2001, to which McDonald returned to presenting. He presented the ITV News at 10.30 following News at Ten's second axing. Since 1999, he has also hosted ITV's flagship current affairs program ‘Tonight with Trevor McDonald.’
I noticed he always sat up straight when delivering the news and spoke slowly and clearly. These are techniques that inspired me during my recording; I spoke softly yet clearly into the microphone to get the best possible sound and made sure there was no 'dead-air' time.
We overcame illness and time-table problems to meet up regularly to record our show and practised a lot in our own free time. Once we were perfectly happy we were practised enough and ready to perform we recorded a section. Many of the sections were recorded more than once and drastically changed to get the best results in the end.
Editing consisted of cutting and moving sound bites on Audacity to make our radio piece flow and improve the listening experience. This was relatively easy on Audacity as it is a basic program, but this also made it hard to do more complex editing- such as creating our disjointed effect for the Haiti story. During the editing process we had to import in our jingle and backing music, and create variations in volume- for example- making it slightly louder between headlines to indicate the next one was coming up.
I enjoyed editing as I got to be part of making what we’d recorded a final radio segment. It was extremely interesting to learn how it all fit together and created a piece of work I’m very proud of.
As a key news reader I felt I needed to take inspiration from professional news readers in the same way we initially took inspiration from professional radio shows. The most experienced and well practised one I could think of was Sir Trevor McDonald, so I researched him:
‘He was promoted in 1992 as the sole presenter of News at Ten, where he became one of the best known faces on British television screens. A year later in 1993, he was awarded an OBE in the Queen's honours list. McDonald stayed with ITN when News at Ten was axed in 1999, moving to present the new ITV Evening News. News at Ten was briefly re-launched in 2001, to which McDonald returned to presenting. He presented the ITV News at 10.30 following News at Ten's second axing. Since 1999, he has also hosted ITV's flagship current affairs program ‘Tonight with Trevor McDonald.’
I noticed he always sat up straight when delivering the news and spoke slowly and clearly. These are techniques that inspired me during my recording; I spoke softly yet clearly into the microphone to get the best possible sound and made sure there was no 'dead-air' time.
We overcame illness and time-table problems to meet up regularly to record our show and practised a lot in our own free time. Once we were perfectly happy we were practised enough and ready to perform we recorded a section. Many of the sections were recorded more than once and drastically changed to get the best results in the end.
Editing consisted of cutting and moving sound bites on Audacity to make our radio piece flow and improve the listening experience. This was relatively easy on Audacity as it is a basic program, but this also made it hard to do more complex editing- such as creating our disjointed effect for the Haiti story. During the editing process we had to import in our jingle and backing music, and create variations in volume- for example- making it slightly louder between headlines to indicate the next one was coming up.
I enjoyed editing as I got to be part of making what we’d recorded a final radio segment. It was extremely interesting to learn how it all fit together and created a piece of work I’m very proud of.
Research and Planning
Due to lots of research and planning being put onto my blog during the working process, I have decided to have a final review of it all to tidy it up:
As a group our task was to produce a short News piece for the radio, we had previously used the radio equipment during our preliminary task and so were used to the equipment such as the mike and knew the computer program: Audacity.
For our initial research we listened too and analysed some established radio stations se we could see how they performed. I wanted diversity in the stations I listened too so that I could get ideas from all areas of radio, because of this I looked at two national stations: Heart and BBC Radio 1, and a local station: 96.5 Bolton FM. Another good thing about this was that one was from the opposite end of the UK and I could see if different regions performed differently.
I already have sections on both these stations on my blog, so rather than repeating all that I shall give a quick overview:
Heart is the local station for London but also goes national; this made it very interesting to research. It played popular music and has a memorable jingle ‘This is Heart’ which I recognised even though I hadn’t really tuned in beforehand; this argues that the 2-Step Flow theory is effective as I must have heard it from others and once tuning into Heart, made my own decision. The news segment was sharp and included all the top headlines, but also featured a section of local news to the capital. As a listener I enjoyed Heart and found it easy to listen too although locally I thought it could have been more in-depth.
BBC Radio 1 is a national station and one I had listened too before. They play chart music and have celebrity presenters such as Chris Moyles, Veron Kay and Fearne Cotton. Although many of the presenters on Radio 1 are very good it became apparent that being a television celebrity does not make you a natural at radio, and many would trail off with uninteresting tales of their own lives. The news section covered the main stories but the shows were generally centred on music and light hearted ‘banter’.
96.5 Bolton FM is the local station for Bolton in Lancashire. The initial sound-bite sounded less professional then the previous two shows but understandably they’d have a cheaper recording system. This station was very local and the news consisted of information about the local market and what the people of Bolton were up too. We needed to learn from this for when we presented our local news section.
For a more in depth look please look at my earlier blog posts.
From this point on me and the group had a brain storm about our radio news segment. We targeted it to be around 4 – 6 minutes long and include both local and nation stories, also including weather and sports, possibly ending with a light hearted story. In our preliminary piece we had branded ourselves as a light hearted team; this was backed up by our name ‘The Coconut Lounge’, and through our presenting we joked around and gave each other silly nicknames. All though there was nothing wrong with this in the right context, we felt as news presenters our final piece needed to be more serious and constructive to meet the mise en scene of the news. We ditched the nicknames and decided upon our first basic timeline which was as followed:
Jingle -30 seconds
Headlines – 1 minute
Main Story – 2 minutes
Vox-Pop (weather) – 30 seconds
Sports – 1 minute
Light Story to end on (interview) – 1 minute
This basic plan gave us bones to work on so that we could build our piece. The idea behind this was that we wanted to include as much as possible such as vox-pops and a jingle without overdoing it and rushing the reports. We were definitely in the planning stage of our final piece.
We began to choose the news stories we wished to present, we chose the stories to represent our mise en scene of a serious news show but with the light-hearted stories common to national news shows such as 'The News at Ten'. I have an earlier more in depth section about this already on my blog, so again a quick over view:
Headlines were to be up to date and researched on the day as we didn’t need to practise talking about them, this was also to be true of weather, we would report on how it was at the time of recording to keep our show relevant and interesting.
Our Main Story was to be the earthquake in Haiti and the aftermath of that.
Sports would include the John Terry affair and up to date football scores.
The light hearted story would be a man with a large crocodile collection in the local area.
We chose real life stories because we wanted to relate to our audience and allow them to feel emotion for the news. We also chose the stories we did because they interested us and so any excitement or sorrow in our voices would be real and therefore a better performance. We began to script sections:
Alex: A massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti.
The extent of the devastation is still unclear but there are fears thousands of people may have died.
Haiti's worst quake in two centuries hit south of the capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, wrecking the presidential palace, UN HQ and other buildings.
Liam: A "large number" of UN personnel were reported missing by the organisation. Many people have spent the night outside amid fears of more aftershocks
Please see an earlier post for full script.
Once we had planned and scripted it all our Time Line changed and looked more like this:
Jingle 20-30 seconds
News headlines 20-30 seconds
Main story in depth 1 minute
Vox pop 30 seconds to be carried out on location
Funny news stories 20-30 seconds
Football news 20-30 seconds
Weather 20-30 seconds
Local weather
Vox pop 30 seconds on location
Jingle 20-30 seconds
This change showed our piece was progressing all the time and we knew we were moving forwards.
To improve this script-work we used brain-storms to decide exactly what we wanted to present and how. Using the influence we had gained from our researched radio stations we decided to present a vast mix of both light-hearted and serious news stories that can juxtapose and give something to everyone, improving our fan-base.
From here we began recording...
As a group our task was to produce a short News piece for the radio, we had previously used the radio equipment during our preliminary task and so were used to the equipment such as the mike and knew the computer program: Audacity.
For our initial research we listened too and analysed some established radio stations se we could see how they performed. I wanted diversity in the stations I listened too so that I could get ideas from all areas of radio, because of this I looked at two national stations: Heart and BBC Radio 1, and a local station: 96.5 Bolton FM. Another good thing about this was that one was from the opposite end of the UK and I could see if different regions performed differently.
I already have sections on both these stations on my blog, so rather than repeating all that I shall give a quick overview:
Heart is the local station for London but also goes national; this made it very interesting to research. It played popular music and has a memorable jingle ‘This is Heart’ which I recognised even though I hadn’t really tuned in beforehand; this argues that the 2-Step Flow theory is effective as I must have heard it from others and once tuning into Heart, made my own decision. The news segment was sharp and included all the top headlines, but also featured a section of local news to the capital. As a listener I enjoyed Heart and found it easy to listen too although locally I thought it could have been more in-depth.
BBC Radio 1 is a national station and one I had listened too before. They play chart music and have celebrity presenters such as Chris Moyles, Veron Kay and Fearne Cotton. Although many of the presenters on Radio 1 are very good it became apparent that being a television celebrity does not make you a natural at radio, and many would trail off with uninteresting tales of their own lives. The news section covered the main stories but the shows were generally centred on music and light hearted ‘banter’.
96.5 Bolton FM is the local station for Bolton in Lancashire. The initial sound-bite sounded less professional then the previous two shows but understandably they’d have a cheaper recording system. This station was very local and the news consisted of information about the local market and what the people of Bolton were up too. We needed to learn from this for when we presented our local news section.
For a more in depth look please look at my earlier blog posts.
From this point on me and the group had a brain storm about our radio news segment. We targeted it to be around 4 – 6 minutes long and include both local and nation stories, also including weather and sports, possibly ending with a light hearted story. In our preliminary piece we had branded ourselves as a light hearted team; this was backed up by our name ‘The Coconut Lounge’, and through our presenting we joked around and gave each other silly nicknames. All though there was nothing wrong with this in the right context, we felt as news presenters our final piece needed to be more serious and constructive to meet the mise en scene of the news. We ditched the nicknames and decided upon our first basic timeline which was as followed:
Jingle -30 seconds
Headlines – 1 minute
Main Story – 2 minutes
Vox-Pop (weather) – 30 seconds
Sports – 1 minute
Light Story to end on (interview) – 1 minute
This basic plan gave us bones to work on so that we could build our piece. The idea behind this was that we wanted to include as much as possible such as vox-pops and a jingle without overdoing it and rushing the reports. We were definitely in the planning stage of our final piece.
We began to choose the news stories we wished to present, we chose the stories to represent our mise en scene of a serious news show but with the light-hearted stories common to national news shows such as 'The News at Ten'. I have an earlier more in depth section about this already on my blog, so again a quick over view:
Headlines were to be up to date and researched on the day as we didn’t need to practise talking about them, this was also to be true of weather, we would report on how it was at the time of recording to keep our show relevant and interesting.
Our Main Story was to be the earthquake in Haiti and the aftermath of that.
Sports would include the John Terry affair and up to date football scores.
The light hearted story would be a man with a large crocodile collection in the local area.
We chose real life stories because we wanted to relate to our audience and allow them to feel emotion for the news. We also chose the stories we did because they interested us and so any excitement or sorrow in our voices would be real and therefore a better performance. We began to script sections:
Alex: A massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti.
The extent of the devastation is still unclear but there are fears thousands of people may have died.
Haiti's worst quake in two centuries hit south of the capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, wrecking the presidential palace, UN HQ and other buildings.
Liam: A "large number" of UN personnel were reported missing by the organisation. Many people have spent the night outside amid fears of more aftershocks
Please see an earlier post for full script.
Once we had planned and scripted it all our Time Line changed and looked more like this:
Jingle 20-30 seconds
News headlines 20-30 seconds
Main story in depth 1 minute
Vox pop 30 seconds to be carried out on location
Funny news stories 20-30 seconds
Football news 20-30 seconds
Weather 20-30 seconds
Local weather
Vox pop 30 seconds on location
Jingle 20-30 seconds
This change showed our piece was progressing all the time and we knew we were moving forwards.
To improve this script-work we used brain-storms to decide exactly what we wanted to present and how. Using the influence we had gained from our researched radio stations we decided to present a vast mix of both light-hearted and serious news stories that can juxtapose and give something to everyone, improving our fan-base.
From here we began recording...
Friday, 19 February 2010
News Stories
For our show we wanted on main news story to be our focal point that we could discuss in detail and include a Vox Pop in, other news headlines, a sports story and a lighter story. It was important to our mise en scene to include this wide variety of news as we catered to our target audience of 15-24 year olds who will have a variety of interest.
We chose the Haiti earthquake as our main story as it was recent and topical at the time of recording and something that meant a lot to us as a team. It had caused so much destruction to an LEDC (less economically developed country) and we wanted to pay our respects by doing an accurate report on it.
‘A massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti. The extent of the devastation is still unclear but there are fears thousands of people may have died. Haiti's worst quake in two centuries hit south of the capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, wrecking the presidential palace, UN HQ and other buildings.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/01/100113_haiti_quake.shtml
For our sports story we decided to report on the John Terry affair as it was topical to the world of sport; his England captaincy was under threat. We also intended to announce up to date football scores.
'England boss Fabio Capello will name defenders Wayne Bridge and John Terry in the squad for the friendly against Egypt on 3 March. Terry is alleged to have had an affair with Bridge's former partner but Capello has warned both defenders not to bring any personal tensions with them.'
We then decided to do a weather report that would again be up to date and relevant, making our news bulletin realistic and relatable.
Our light hearted story was to be a local report of a man with a large crocodile farm. We thought this would be interesting and fun, while giving us the chance to do an interview- this could be another Vox Pop, a pre-recorded interview or a live phone in.
We chose the Haiti earthquake as our main story as it was recent and topical at the time of recording and something that meant a lot to us as a team. It had caused so much destruction to an LEDC (less economically developed country) and we wanted to pay our respects by doing an accurate report on it.
‘A massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti. The extent of the devastation is still unclear but there are fears thousands of people may have died. Haiti's worst quake in two centuries hit south of the capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, wrecking the presidential palace, UN HQ and other buildings.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/01/100113_haiti_quake.shtml
For our sports story we decided to report on the John Terry affair as it was topical to the world of sport; his England captaincy was under threat. We also intended to announce up to date football scores.
'England boss Fabio Capello will name defenders Wayne Bridge and John Terry in the squad for the friendly against Egypt on 3 March. Terry is alleged to have had an affair with Bridge's former partner but Capello has warned both defenders not to bring any personal tensions with them.'
We then decided to do a weather report that would again be up to date and relevant, making our news bulletin realistic and relatable.
Our light hearted story was to be a local report of a man with a large crocodile farm. We thought this would be interesting and fun, while giving us the chance to do an interview- this could be another Vox Pop, a pre-recorded interview or a live phone in.
Recording
We began recording this week in our Recording Room using Audacity. Due to the practise we’d had from our preliminary we knew to speak softly into the microphones while sitting straight and were prepared with a script we had wrote. During our research phase we listened to both national and local radio for inspiration- surprisingly, a lot of the smaller local stations were of a better presenting standard as they connected better with their audiences and had relatable dialects. A lot of national stations used television celebrities to present their shows but it became apparent that being a talented television presenter does not necessarily make you a good radio presenter. Often these celebrities such as Veron Kay and Fearne Cotton would trail off and speak about their own lives rather than the topic in hand.
We listened to a large variety of radio because we wanted our own work to be of a high standard. We made this basic plan to follow which we then wrote our script around:
Jingle -30 seconds
Headlines – 1 minute
Main Story – 2 minutes
Vox-Pot (weather) – 30 seconds
Sports – 1 minute
Light Story to end on (interview) – 1 minute
We found numerous problems during the recording process such as conflicting time tables so it was harder for the whole group to meet, illness such as Ruhul losing his voice and lack of time in the recording room due to having to share it with two other groups. Despite these setbacks, we overcame them to meet up for work effectively.
Our first few lessons were spent script writing and searching for news stories we could report on, these included:
A main headline
Other headlines
Sports
Weather
Light hearted story.
To do this we looked online at reliable sites such as the BBC.
Before recording, we read our scripts aloud to practise and sometimes had to record a story three or four times to get it right. This was worth it though, as we wanted the best results.
We listened to a large variety of radio because we wanted our own work to be of a high standard. We made this basic plan to follow which we then wrote our script around:
Jingle -30 seconds
Headlines – 1 minute
Main Story – 2 minutes
Vox-Pot (weather) – 30 seconds
Sports – 1 minute
Light Story to end on (interview) – 1 minute
We found numerous problems during the recording process such as conflicting time tables so it was harder for the whole group to meet, illness such as Ruhul losing his voice and lack of time in the recording room due to having to share it with two other groups. Despite these setbacks, we overcame them to meet up for work effectively.
Our first few lessons were spent script writing and searching for news stories we could report on, these included:
A main headline
Other headlines
Sports
Weather
Light hearted story.
To do this we looked online at reliable sites such as the BBC.
Before recording, we read our scripts aloud to practise and sometimes had to record a story three or four times to get it right. This was worth it though, as we wanted the best results.
Representations + The Glasgow Media Group + Plan so Far
Being impartial and ‘fair’ while presenting the news is a very important value for me. I think to be bias in anyway would offend our target audience of young-people who want fair and legit news and by doing so would contradict the Mise en Scene we are trying to create.
While studying the Ideology Theory I came across the ‘Glasgow Media Group’ who are a group of media theorists linked with Glasgow University. While analysing the Ideology Theory they undertook a series of tests they called ‘The Ideology of Truth and Neutrality’. These tests were put in place to see how ‘truth’ was represented in the media- something that will greatly affect my news segment.
While researching BBC News they concluded that during reports of trade union strikes, the BBC tended to represent bosses as rational and civilized individuals, who they often invited into the studio to listen to their side- while they represented the work force to be a ‘mob’ of an emotive crowd.
In the worst cases this misrepresentation can lead to bias opinions and misconduct. In the case of the BBC reports there may have been harm meant, but it was apparent that the workers did not have their views as widely distributed as the bosses’ views.
For my coursework I want my news stories to be as impartial as possible as I try and give my media consumers the truths and facts of a situation. I think it is right to give an audience what they’d expect from a media text, and will try and deliver these values.
With these values in mind I have constructed a short plan of our radio show so far, in which all the stories recorded are impartial yet interesting:
Jingle 20-30 seconds RECORDED
News Headlines 20-30 RECORDED seconds to be read by Liam and me
Main Story in depth RECORDED 1 minute to be read by me
Vox Pop 30 seconds to be carried out on location by Ruhul
Funny News Stories 20-30 seconds to be read by Liam and me
Football News RECORDED 20-30 seconds to be read by Liam and me
Weather 20-30 RECORDED read by me
Local Weather read by Ruhul
Vox Pop 30 seconds RECORDED on location read by Ruhul
Jingle 20-30 seconds RECORDED
Some of the recorded material was still liable to be changed and improved.
While studying the Ideology Theory I came across the ‘Glasgow Media Group’ who are a group of media theorists linked with Glasgow University. While analysing the Ideology Theory they undertook a series of tests they called ‘The Ideology of Truth and Neutrality’. These tests were put in place to see how ‘truth’ was represented in the media- something that will greatly affect my news segment.
While researching BBC News they concluded that during reports of trade union strikes, the BBC tended to represent bosses as rational and civilized individuals, who they often invited into the studio to listen to their side- while they represented the work force to be a ‘mob’ of an emotive crowd.
In the worst cases this misrepresentation can lead to bias opinions and misconduct. In the case of the BBC reports there may have been harm meant, but it was apparent that the workers did not have their views as widely distributed as the bosses’ views.
For my coursework I want my news stories to be as impartial as possible as I try and give my media consumers the truths and facts of a situation. I think it is right to give an audience what they’d expect from a media text, and will try and deliver these values.
With these values in mind I have constructed a short plan of our radio show so far, in which all the stories recorded are impartial yet interesting:
Jingle 20-30 seconds RECORDED
News Headlines 20-30 RECORDED seconds to be read by Liam and me
Main Story in depth RECORDED 1 minute to be read by me
Vox Pop 30 seconds to be carried out on location by Ruhul
Funny News Stories 20-30 seconds to be read by Liam and me
Football News RECORDED 20-30 seconds to be read by Liam and me
Weather 20-30 RECORDED read by me
Local Weather read by Ruhul
Vox Pop 30 seconds RECORDED on location read by Ruhul
Jingle 20-30 seconds RECORDED
Some of the recorded material was still liable to be changed and improved.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Conventions of Radio
Conventions of Radio:
This is what I learned from my research into other radio stations, specifically Heart FM, 95.6 Bolton FM and BBC Radio 1.
Pauses/slang/catch phrase:
Slang and pauses are more common on Local radio such as Bolton FM due to smaller audiences who feel more like a community. Nation radios such as Kerrang or Heart FM use better English as they speak to a more unknown audience (people from all over the UK instead of a smaller area), despite this one of the main catch phrases of 1Xtra, a London based radio station, is ‘get funky’. This is because both national and local stations use catch phrases to attract audiences’ and appear ‘down to earth’. The more informal the station the more informal the catch phrase.
DJ talks about him/herself:
Usually DJ’s will talk about stories or music, but on occasions they will discuss their own lives. This will usually happen on a Monday morning while the presenters discuss their weekends. I researched and analysed this as I listened to Kerrang Radio where the presenter reported on a music festival he’d visited at the weekend.
DJ talks about the record:
The discussion of records and music comprises mostly of phattic utterances (small talk) which is pleasant to listen too. They will normally talk about the artist and how well the track is doing in the charts. As our course work will be a news show we won’t be focusing too strongly on this, but can use some of these skills while discussing news stories.
DJ talks about or to the listener:
On most radio stations, local and national, listeners can phone in to give opinions, such as sport opinions on Radio 5 Live, or answers quizzes on BBC Radio 1. This gives the listener an opportunity to be part of the radio experience and hopefully keep audiences’ listening and phoning in (often there are chances to win prizes). Obviously listeners are more likely to get through to the station on local radio as there are less people ringing in, yet less people will hear what they have to say in this instance.
DJ digresses to another subject:
Topic shift is frequent during radio shows as it keeps stories fresh and listeners interested and listening. Within our news piece we will discuss different news stories to meet the large variety of interests.
DJ promotes another show:
Usually DJs will promote other shows on the same station, for example Chris Moyles from Radio 1 may promote Reggie Yates who does a later show. Promoting shows form the station in an obvious business technique to boost audience ratings. They will not normally promote other stations, and they are the competition.
Jingles:
Jingles are used to attract audiences’, they are catchy and if a listener hears a snippet of your jingle while scrolling through radio stations they will stay and listen. Both national and local stations use this tactic, and example is Kerrangs jingle and slogan ‘Kerrang: Live Life Loud’ to a snappy tune. We will devise one for our coursework.
Vox-Pop:
A Vox-pop is an on location report made outside of the station, such as an ‘on-location’ news report. They are recorded using handheld recorders. We might use this during our news segment if we decided to do an on location report.
This is what I learned from my research into other radio stations, specifically Heart FM, 95.6 Bolton FM and BBC Radio 1.
Pauses/slang/catch phrase:
Slang and pauses are more common on Local radio such as Bolton FM due to smaller audiences who feel more like a community. Nation radios such as Kerrang or Heart FM use better English as they speak to a more unknown audience (people from all over the UK instead of a smaller area), despite this one of the main catch phrases of 1Xtra, a London based radio station, is ‘get funky’. This is because both national and local stations use catch phrases to attract audiences’ and appear ‘down to earth’. The more informal the station the more informal the catch phrase.
DJ talks about him/herself:
Usually DJ’s will talk about stories or music, but on occasions they will discuss their own lives. This will usually happen on a Monday morning while the presenters discuss their weekends. I researched and analysed this as I listened to Kerrang Radio where the presenter reported on a music festival he’d visited at the weekend.
DJ talks about the record:
The discussion of records and music comprises mostly of phattic utterances (small talk) which is pleasant to listen too. They will normally talk about the artist and how well the track is doing in the charts. As our course work will be a news show we won’t be focusing too strongly on this, but can use some of these skills while discussing news stories.
DJ talks about or to the listener:
On most radio stations, local and national, listeners can phone in to give opinions, such as sport opinions on Radio 5 Live, or answers quizzes on BBC Radio 1. This gives the listener an opportunity to be part of the radio experience and hopefully keep audiences’ listening and phoning in (often there are chances to win prizes). Obviously listeners are more likely to get through to the station on local radio as there are less people ringing in, yet less people will hear what they have to say in this instance.
DJ digresses to another subject:
Topic shift is frequent during radio shows as it keeps stories fresh and listeners interested and listening. Within our news piece we will discuss different news stories to meet the large variety of interests.
DJ promotes another show:
Usually DJs will promote other shows on the same station, for example Chris Moyles from Radio 1 may promote Reggie Yates who does a later show. Promoting shows form the station in an obvious business technique to boost audience ratings. They will not normally promote other stations, and they are the competition.
Jingles:
Jingles are used to attract audiences’, they are catchy and if a listener hears a snippet of your jingle while scrolling through radio stations they will stay and listen. Both national and local stations use this tactic, and example is Kerrangs jingle and slogan ‘Kerrang: Live Life Loud’ to a snappy tune. We will devise one for our coursework.
Vox-Pop:
A Vox-pop is an on location report made outside of the station, such as an ‘on-location’ news report. They are recorded using handheld recorders. We might use this during our news segment if we decided to do an on location report.
Monday, 18 January 2010
Plan so far and progress from Action Plan
Main task: A five minute news bulletin (local radio) to include title music, presenter, specialist reporters, OBs, recorded interview, a vox pop and appropriate sound fx and structure.
We now have a short time line for our show, this plan will give us something to follow as we begin to record.
Jingle- 20 seconds
Introduce of the coconut lounge- (Liable to change for a more serious approach. This is because we want our news segment to be taken seriously)- 1 minutes
Round up of big news headlines - 2 minutes
Cut to Hooli with the outside broadcast - 1 minute
Sports round up and interviews - 1 minute
Weather - 30 secondsEnding
jingle 20 seconds
We are considering creating a new jingle to meet the Mise en Scene of the news.
We now have a short time line for our show, this plan will give us something to follow as we begin to record.
Jingle- 20 seconds
Introduce of the coconut lounge- (Liable to change for a more serious approach. This is because we want our news segment to be taken seriously)- 1 minutes
Round up of big news headlines - 2 minutes
Cut to Hooli with the outside broadcast - 1 minute
Sports round up and interviews - 1 minute
Weather - 30 secondsEnding
jingle 20 seconds
We are considering creating a new jingle to meet the Mise en Scene of the news.
Script
This is a scripted version of our radio show I wrote up. This gives us something to read as we record so we get the stories right.
Jingle
Alex: Our headlines today:
Liam: A nineteen year old part time shop assistant has been found murdered in Reading
A: Relatives of Vincent Van Gough has launched a major exhibition of the artists work in London
L: Children’s Sectary, Ed Balls has caused for the urgent upheaval of a loop hole that allows corporal punishment in part-time schools
A: Finally, ‘all you can drink’ offers in pubs may be banned, and ID checks made compulsory under a planned code in England and Wales – Our main story today:
L: Thousands are feared dead after a massive earthquake that struck Haiti
A: The seven magnitude quake which hit the Haiti capital of Port-au-Prince on the 12th of January is the worst earthquake to have hit the country in two-hundred years.
We now go to our correspondent Hooli who is in Haiti getting local reaction:
Hooli: (Voxpop) Hooli will talk to local villagers who are shook up after the disaster, and then he will discuss way to help with a disaster coordinator.
L: Thank you Hooli. Listeners you may have experienced some audio disruption
Sports Jingle
A: Now the sports news
L: In transfer news, Wigan has secured the signature of Victor Moses from Crystal Palace who have gone into administration
A: Egypt beat Ghana 1 – 0 in the African Cup of Nations Final
L: SPL league champions, Celtic, have acquired Robbie Keane on a yearlong loan from Tottenham Hotspur. Now to our main story:
A: John Terry’s captaincy is now is question after his alleged affair with the wife of Wayne Bridge. And now some local news:
L: There has been a rise in ethnic minority students
A: Just over one in ten students at Oxford University were from an ethnic minority background
L: Oxford United back health scheme:
A: The scheme that allows fans to get a health check at the Kassam Stadium has been backed by the squad
L: The world’s largest private crocodile collection has been found in Whitney
A: Shaun Bogart from Whitney keeps crocodiles in his back garden and now wants to create the countries first ever crocodile conservation
L: We had a chance to catch up with Shaun today, and here’s what happened:
Insert interview with ‘Shaun Bogart’. I will play Shaun while Liam will conduct the interview.
A: To Hooli with the weather
H: Thanks guys, and now today’s weather. On the local side we have temperatures as high as 11 degrees in Oxford with slight winds at up to 14mph. With the national weather, we have rain in parts of Scotland, temperatures as low as 3 degrees. As we move south of Scotland to the north of England, we have rain in the Newcastle area, low winds and temperatures as low as 2 degrees. In the midlands area with Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield we have patches of cloud but were not expecting any rain. Still temperatures are low at 2 to 3 degrees. Down with Birmingham, Leicester, Northampton and Coventry they’re luckier with some sunshine but it’s still quite cold. Lows of 5 degrees, highs of 10, throughout the day cloud will move in. Towards London we’re going to have a few showers today and tomorrow but will clear up for the weekend. And that’s the weather.
Thank you for listening to the news, we will be back with more headlines today.
Jingle
Alex: Our headlines today:
Liam: A nineteen year old part time shop assistant has been found murdered in Reading
A: Relatives of Vincent Van Gough has launched a major exhibition of the artists work in London
L: Children’s Sectary, Ed Balls has caused for the urgent upheaval of a loop hole that allows corporal punishment in part-time schools
A: Finally, ‘all you can drink’ offers in pubs may be banned, and ID checks made compulsory under a planned code in England and Wales – Our main story today:
L: Thousands are feared dead after a massive earthquake that struck Haiti
A: The seven magnitude quake which hit the Haiti capital of Port-au-Prince on the 12th of January is the worst earthquake to have hit the country in two-hundred years.
We now go to our correspondent Hooli who is in Haiti getting local reaction:
Hooli: (Voxpop) Hooli will talk to local villagers who are shook up after the disaster, and then he will discuss way to help with a disaster coordinator.
L: Thank you Hooli. Listeners you may have experienced some audio disruption
Sports Jingle
A: Now the sports news
L: In transfer news, Wigan has secured the signature of Victor Moses from Crystal Palace who have gone into administration
A: Egypt beat Ghana 1 – 0 in the African Cup of Nations Final
L: SPL league champions, Celtic, have acquired Robbie Keane on a yearlong loan from Tottenham Hotspur. Now to our main story:
A: John Terry’s captaincy is now is question after his alleged affair with the wife of Wayne Bridge. And now some local news:
L: There has been a rise in ethnic minority students
A: Just over one in ten students at Oxford University were from an ethnic minority background
L: Oxford United back health scheme:
A: The scheme that allows fans to get a health check at the Kassam Stadium has been backed by the squad
L: The world’s largest private crocodile collection has been found in Whitney
A: Shaun Bogart from Whitney keeps crocodiles in his back garden and now wants to create the countries first ever crocodile conservation
L: We had a chance to catch up with Shaun today, and here’s what happened:
Insert interview with ‘Shaun Bogart’. I will play Shaun while Liam will conduct the interview.
A: To Hooli with the weather
H: Thanks guys, and now today’s weather. On the local side we have temperatures as high as 11 degrees in Oxford with slight winds at up to 14mph. With the national weather, we have rain in parts of Scotland, temperatures as low as 3 degrees. As we move south of Scotland to the north of England, we have rain in the Newcastle area, low winds and temperatures as low as 2 degrees. In the midlands area with Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield we have patches of cloud but were not expecting any rain. Still temperatures are low at 2 to 3 degrees. Down with Birmingham, Leicester, Northampton and Coventry they’re luckier with some sunshine but it’s still quite cold. Lows of 5 degrees, highs of 10, throughout the day cloud will move in. Towards London we’re going to have a few showers today and tomorrow but will clear up for the weekend. And that’s the weather.
Thank you for listening to the news, we will be back with more headlines today.
Research into Local/National Radio
Local:
96.5 Bolton FM
http://www.boltonfm.com/
About Bolton FM:
"Bolton FM is a new growing radio station for the town we love to serve. Our unique selling point (USP) is that we are based in Bolton and are run by volunteers and staff who have lived in the town all their lives. Because we are new we need to grow our news brand. It is the stations aim to be a respected and reliable source for everything that's happening in Bolton.
What’s their history?
Back in 1997 Bolton was to have its first commercial radio station. A group of radio enthusiasts led by Dorothy Maryland, Roy Worthington and Derek Knowles got together a team, and planned to bid for the licence.
They got the advice of Councillor Frank White who brought together BIG community backing by getting the likes of Bolton Wanderers, Bury FC & The Manchester Evening News on board.
Over two years building up to the licence being announced, and under the radio station name of Variety FM, they provided Bolton with a number of professionally run restricted service licence (RSL).
In 1999 came the news that Variety Gold had not got the licence and it had been given to Tower FM - a bury group.
The disappointment was immense but one thing that had emerged during all this was that radio training is a tremendous tool in raising self confidence and self-esteem. So DBBC a radio training charity was born.
A few years later it was announced that Bolton was to get a truly local radio station, with a community licence being advertised. The team knew this was their chance to truly make a difference in Bolton, and succeed in the dream of providing Bolton with a radio station that serves its community. And here we are!"
Research Points:
The DJ's comes from local volunteers who have 'lived in Bolton their whole lives and know the area' they therefore speak in deep accents that are true to their upbringing and will connect to the local listeners.
They use northern dialect and phrases that are known to the area such as 'Teas on't table' and 'chuck' in humorous ways.
The records seem quite modern and from the charts rather than older ones. They will play some related songs such as famous northern bands like 'Oasis'.
The two DJ's are discussing local issues between songs to help the local people. As I’m listening, they are advertising a charity 'pet wash' happening in the area, which is leading to a general conversation about pets and a humorous time in their lives when his cat had kittens and he was stuck with 10 kittens, this 'banter' makes its more interesting and is likely to attract listeners. The chat fades into song and yet again it is a popular hit from the charts.
There is a lot of advertising for 'What’s coming up' on the show, and in the local area, such as the pet wash. It mentions local sport events and music performances.
Sound effects are used cleverly before the news is read out, this technique allows people who hear the tune to become familiar with it and listen closely if it’s heard.
The station has several high profile connections including former Labour Whip Frank White as the station's chairman and Xfm radio presenter Darryl Morris as a director and programming advisor. Former Cops actor Jack Marsden is a regular presenter.
Carl Hartley is Programme Controller of the station, a position he held at former CN Group station Rugby FM. He's also had experience at Lakeland Radio, Tower FM, and The Bay
Presenting the show: Jay Hull
Talking to the listener: He discussed local events of interest, there was opportunities for call ins
Talking about the record: He would introduce the next track
Adverts: Local businesses eg ‘Plumbers of Bolton’
Catch phrase/Theme tune: to a tune ’96.5 Live from the North’
Digresses to another subject: Presenters did discuss their personal lives
DJ talks about own life: He announced he’s getting a new dog at the weekend
I think local radio presenters connect with their audience better, as they deal with local topics and in this normally have presenters from the local area. Usually their editing skills are not as good as those of a national station, due to a lack of funding and less expensive equipment. This can also affect things such as their jingles. Despite this down-fall they work hard to present local issues.
National:
BBC Radio 1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/radio1/
"BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the BBC which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock or interviews. It is aimed primarily at the 15–29 age group.[1] Radio 1 was launched at 7:00am on 30 September 1967 as a direct response to the popularity of offshore pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline, which had been outlawed by Act of Parliament."
I listened to a show presented by Greg James and made notes:
DJ's: Greg James (but many throughout the day such as well known Chris Moyle’s and Ferne Cotton)
Catchphrases such as 'This is BBC Radio 1' are used frequently during the show.
The DJ's discuss themselves and their weekends with humorous effect to give a pleasurable listening experience and attract listeners. My criticism to this 'Greg James' show is that he is on his own and so has no one to talk too and therefore just talks about himself to his audience.
The records played are all chart hits and they have a charts show leading down to the number 1 song. They tend to be the genre of ‘pop’ or ‘RnB’.
Research Notes:
Slang: slang used like 'oh yeah'. This makes the listener feel more 'at home' and enjoy the experience.
Talks about themselves: talks about himself e.g who he is and what time he got there. This makes the listener feel they know the presenter and builds 'friendship' bonds, which will bring the listener back. This though, is usually done better on local radio.
About the record: Jason Durulo track is discussed. This keeps the show relevant with modern music.
Talks to the listener: talks about the news to the caller, again keeping the listener a main priority and creating a masked 'friendship'.
Another subject: talking about Christmas, again keeping the show relevant.
Says whets coming up: 'Jay Sean up next' This keeps the listener listening as they will want to hear the song.
catch phrase: 'You're listening to radio 1’
These national stations have less connection with their audience, with different people calling in everyday (due to the large audience). But the listening experience is normally preferred due to their better technical and editing equipment.
I then listened to Heart FM and made similar notes to compare. Heart is particularly interesting as it is London's local station that also broadcasts nationally.
Heart fM
http://www.heart.co.uk/
Presenting the show: Toby Anstis
Talking to the listener: caller calls in to answer question on chance to win tickets to a gig paid for by the show
Talking about the record: talking about the song e.g name chart position and if they like the track
Promotes another show: uses upcoming messages to tell you when Emma Bunton’s radio show will begin.
Adverts: Lg phones, trust a trader.com, Wilkerson and Persil
Catch phrase/Theme tune: 'This is Heart' and 'Give it Some Heart'
Digresses to another subject: starts talking about I’m a celebrity get me out of here.
Says whets coming up: songs from Michael Bubble and Lighthouse Family coming up.
DJ talks about own life: say that he is not feeling too well and has caught the cold that is going round
National and Local stations advertise different products and events (local promote local goods while national advertised bigger brands) but they both use similar advertising theories. They use the Syringe Theory to promote themselves, every time you hear 'This is Heart' as a listener, you feel you want to keep listening to hear what’s coming up on the show. The Two-Step Flow theory is also used, as people go away and discuss what they've heard on the radio e.g "BBC Radio 1 was playing that new track!" and more people will go and listen to pass their own judgment.
I will use these notes to create a document of 'radio convections' to develop my research and then use during the recording of my radio show.
By listening to these two stations I managed to analyse them and pick up some key skills. I listened to how the DJ's spoke and wrote down the convections of radio. I see our radio course-work being a local news show but with qualities from a national show. We will report on both national and local stories with the professionalism of editing from a national show, but the heart-warming presenting and audience connection you receive from local radio.
96.5 Bolton FM
http://www.boltonfm.com/
About Bolton FM:
"Bolton FM is a new growing radio station for the town we love to serve. Our unique selling point (USP) is that we are based in Bolton and are run by volunteers and staff who have lived in the town all their lives. Because we are new we need to grow our news brand. It is the stations aim to be a respected and reliable source for everything that's happening in Bolton.
What’s their history?
Back in 1997 Bolton was to have its first commercial radio station. A group of radio enthusiasts led by Dorothy Maryland, Roy Worthington and Derek Knowles got together a team, and planned to bid for the licence.
They got the advice of Councillor Frank White who brought together BIG community backing by getting the likes of Bolton Wanderers, Bury FC & The Manchester Evening News on board.
Over two years building up to the licence being announced, and under the radio station name of Variety FM, they provided Bolton with a number of professionally run restricted service licence (RSL).
In 1999 came the news that Variety Gold had not got the licence and it had been given to Tower FM - a bury group.
The disappointment was immense but one thing that had emerged during all this was that radio training is a tremendous tool in raising self confidence and self-esteem. So DBBC a radio training charity was born.
A few years later it was announced that Bolton was to get a truly local radio station, with a community licence being advertised. The team knew this was their chance to truly make a difference in Bolton, and succeed in the dream of providing Bolton with a radio station that serves its community. And here we are!"
Research Points:
The DJ's comes from local volunteers who have 'lived in Bolton their whole lives and know the area' they therefore speak in deep accents that are true to their upbringing and will connect to the local listeners.
They use northern dialect and phrases that are known to the area such as 'Teas on't table' and 'chuck' in humorous ways.
The records seem quite modern and from the charts rather than older ones. They will play some related songs such as famous northern bands like 'Oasis'.
The two DJ's are discussing local issues between songs to help the local people. As I’m listening, they are advertising a charity 'pet wash' happening in the area, which is leading to a general conversation about pets and a humorous time in their lives when his cat had kittens and he was stuck with 10 kittens, this 'banter' makes its more interesting and is likely to attract listeners. The chat fades into song and yet again it is a popular hit from the charts.
There is a lot of advertising for 'What’s coming up' on the show, and in the local area, such as the pet wash. It mentions local sport events and music performances.
Sound effects are used cleverly before the news is read out, this technique allows people who hear the tune to become familiar with it and listen closely if it’s heard.
The station has several high profile connections including former Labour Whip Frank White as the station's chairman and Xfm radio presenter Darryl Morris as a director and programming advisor. Former Cops actor Jack Marsden is a regular presenter.
Carl Hartley is Programme Controller of the station, a position he held at former CN Group station Rugby FM. He's also had experience at Lakeland Radio, Tower FM, and The Bay
Presenting the show: Jay Hull
Talking to the listener: He discussed local events of interest, there was opportunities for call ins
Talking about the record: He would introduce the next track
Adverts: Local businesses eg ‘Plumbers of Bolton’
Catch phrase/Theme tune: to a tune ’96.5 Live from the North’
Digresses to another subject: Presenters did discuss their personal lives
DJ talks about own life: He announced he’s getting a new dog at the weekend
I think local radio presenters connect with their audience better, as they deal with local topics and in this normally have presenters from the local area. Usually their editing skills are not as good as those of a national station, due to a lack of funding and less expensive equipment. This can also affect things such as their jingles. Despite this down-fall they work hard to present local issues.
National:
BBC Radio 1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/radio1/
"BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the BBC which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock or interviews. It is aimed primarily at the 15–29 age group.[1] Radio 1 was launched at 7:00am on 30 September 1967 as a direct response to the popularity of offshore pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline, which had been outlawed by Act of Parliament."
I listened to a show presented by Greg James and made notes:
DJ's: Greg James (but many throughout the day such as well known Chris Moyle’s and Ferne Cotton)
Catchphrases such as 'This is BBC Radio 1' are used frequently during the show.
The DJ's discuss themselves and their weekends with humorous effect to give a pleasurable listening experience and attract listeners. My criticism to this 'Greg James' show is that he is on his own and so has no one to talk too and therefore just talks about himself to his audience.
The records played are all chart hits and they have a charts show leading down to the number 1 song. They tend to be the genre of ‘pop’ or ‘RnB’.
Research Notes:
Slang: slang used like 'oh yeah'. This makes the listener feel more 'at home' and enjoy the experience.
Talks about themselves: talks about himself e.g who he is and what time he got there. This makes the listener feel they know the presenter and builds 'friendship' bonds, which will bring the listener back. This though, is usually done better on local radio.
About the record: Jason Durulo track is discussed. This keeps the show relevant with modern music.
Talks to the listener: talks about the news to the caller, again keeping the listener a main priority and creating a masked 'friendship'.
Another subject: talking about Christmas, again keeping the show relevant.
Says whets coming up: 'Jay Sean up next' This keeps the listener listening as they will want to hear the song.
catch phrase: 'You're listening to radio 1’
These national stations have less connection with their audience, with different people calling in everyday (due to the large audience). But the listening experience is normally preferred due to their better technical and editing equipment.
I then listened to Heart FM and made similar notes to compare. Heart is particularly interesting as it is London's local station that also broadcasts nationally.
Heart fM
http://www.heart.co.uk/
Presenting the show: Toby Anstis
Talking to the listener: caller calls in to answer question on chance to win tickets to a gig paid for by the show
Talking about the record: talking about the song e.g name chart position and if they like the track
Promotes another show: uses upcoming messages to tell you when Emma Bunton’s radio show will begin.
Adverts: Lg phones, trust a trader.com, Wilkerson and Persil
Catch phrase/Theme tune: 'This is Heart' and 'Give it Some Heart'
Digresses to another subject: starts talking about I’m a celebrity get me out of here.
Says whets coming up: songs from Michael Bubble and Lighthouse Family coming up.
DJ talks about own life: say that he is not feeling too well and has caught the cold that is going round
National and Local stations advertise different products and events (local promote local goods while national advertised bigger brands) but they both use similar advertising theories. They use the Syringe Theory to promote themselves, every time you hear 'This is Heart' as a listener, you feel you want to keep listening to hear what’s coming up on the show. The Two-Step Flow theory is also used, as people go away and discuss what they've heard on the radio e.g "BBC Radio 1 was playing that new track!" and more people will go and listen to pass their own judgment.
I will use these notes to create a document of 'radio convections' to develop my research and then use during the recording of my radio show.
By listening to these two stations I managed to analyse them and pick up some key skills. I listened to how the DJ's spoke and wrote down the convections of radio. I see our radio course-work being a local news show but with qualities from a national show. We will report on both national and local stories with the professionalism of editing from a national show, but the heart-warming presenting and audience connection you receive from local radio.
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