Xmas Special - Smooth Christmas

For this special Christmas post, I thought I would have a quick look into the festive station 'Smooth Christmas'. The music station was launched by 'Smooth Radio' in 2011. The station replaces 'Smooth Extra' for the Christmas period and can be heard Online, on DAB, on the Mobile App and on Sky TV. The station delivers short news bulletins most hours with an upbeat bed and consisting mostly of copy stories. This makes the stories come across as quicker and happier appealing to the target audience and matching the theme of the station. The information from this helps us to consider techniques when making our own station as we to with 'Rhythm Extra' are looking to have a bed in the bulletin and aim the bulletin towards our young target audience. 

Structure of Rhythm Extra

We decided within our group it was important to have a clear structure for our radio broadcast that we would stick to. We had settled on our logo and ideal listener and so we based the types of story around this. We decided the introduction jingle would be a reggae style which is upbeat and catchy. From the results of the survey we decided to include local news, entertainment news, sports, and a brief weather forecast. The surveys told us that our target audience would not be interested in politics and so we decided this would not feature on the show. The structure of the radio show is shown below:

We also decided our roles within the news bulletin. Chris was be the main newsreader because of his clear voice in the preliminary task and ability to read without hesitation. I was wanting to do the sports news as I enjoyed recording for the preliminary task and the team were happy with this decision. Charlotte would speak the weather news for voice variation and Vince would record the introduction and read a news report. We felt it was far we all played a talking part in the news bulletin. There was a variety in voice and tone to keep the audience entertained, and there is both males and female voices for great audience appeal to both genders.

Your Target Audience

For this task we created a questionnaire which we would give to young adults for us to establish what younger listeners would want to hear when listening to radio. We decided to make the questionnaire on Microsoft Word as it was familiar and we printed off multiple copies.We decided that all the surveys would be given out on paper as the answers would hopefully have more time spent on them instead of being rushed online , giving us a reliable result. The complete example copy of the questionnaire is shown below.

After collecting results from 30 questionnaires, we decided that the easiest way to initially understand the results, would be to make pie charts. From this we would be able to decide how to present our radio show, but first come up with a profile for an ideal listener, using a similar technique to the BBC's 'Dave and Sue'. We decided on a fictional character called James with the following profile:

James is a 17 year old boy living in Newport, at the centre of the Isle of Wight. His social life is typical of a teenager including going to the cinema and parties. He is currently studying A Levels. He listens to the radio in the morning to keep up with current affairs and likes the news bulletins to contain local news, celebrity news and sports but likes it to be played with music underneath (bed).

The results tell us that we should aim for a morning or evening radio show. We know people of this age listen mostly to BBC Radio 1 and Capital FM, however these results are not clear winners and so we should consider the styles of other radio stations as well. Although the results show that our listeners prefer bulletins to be presented in a 'short and snappy' way, we need to make a radio show of around 5 minutes long and so we can make sure our stories are instead presented in an upbeat style. It is important for local news to be included, although a high percentage of people would like a mix. Finally we now know that we should definitely include a bed in our show.

Planning Tasks: Your Local Radio Station

For the first planning task, we had to come up with a suitable name for or local radio station. Between the four of us, we came up with multiple names. The first name we came up with was 'Newport News Network (NNN)' however we soon decided that the name was long and potentially not short enough to appeal to our teenage target audience. Being the same team as the preliminary task, we decided we would go back to our original name of 'Rhythm Radio' but change it to be a digital sister station. We came up with names including, Rhythm Radio Plus and Rhythm Radio Extra. The vote was that Rhythm Radio Extra was most appealing so far but we continued to create names until we were sure. We drafted 'CarisbrookeDigital' and 'AirFM' but were not convinced they would be snappy and memorable for our audience. After much discussion we went back to the ideas of 'Rhythm Radio' and considered adding Online to the end, but decided for a memorable and snappy name that would fit our audience and be related to our preliminary task station, 'Rhythm Extra' was what we would go for. We decided to create the logo below as a way to recognise our station. I asked many people who are within the target audience age and they agreed that the font could not be basic but shouldn't be over the top. We made a few logos and decided the one below fitted out target audience the most. 

The Rules of Radio Broadcasting

Basic Rules of Writing for Radio

Below are the 13 main  rules for writing for radio. It is useful to have these recorded for when we script. We looked at these rules and annotated copies of the Isle of Wight Radio bulletin scripts as well as rewriting articles from newspapers. 

1. Write as if you’re talking to a friend - use contractions, (e.g. don’t, can’t, shouldn’t). This rule is in place as it sounds far more natural across radio, it is also not too formal or patronising. This rule is important to remember when we script but shouldn't be hard to forget as it should be the natural thing to do.
2. Who, What, Where, When, Why, (How). It is important to remember all the detail when writing for radio "A man has stolen £1000 today due to fears of drug repayments" is clearly not suitable for national radio is it missed the point 'Where'.
3. KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid! (Simple Sentences - one idea, one sentence). This can apply for more than just writing the rules and is important to remember, it is so easy to type and forget what has just been typed and it is so easy to type and forget what has just been typed and repeat yourself or including unneeded details.
4. Two or three sentences for a cue (Four for a copy story). Nobody wants to hear too much about one story, it is likely they will hear the story multiple times in a day and they do not want to hear the same in-depth report each time. This links to point number 3.
5. Write numbers as words, e.g. 2010 becomes, “two thousand and ten” or “twenty ten”. When reading off of a script a long number such as £125,000,000 could be hard to work out in a short time and so it is easier and flows better to write numbers as words.
6. (Peter Barfoot, 17, from Lake) This doesn’t make sense when it is read aloud so it is changed to: “Seventeen-year-old Peter Barfoot from Lake” or “Peter Barfoot - Who’s seventeen and from Lake.” To make the story as clear as possible to the audience it is important to remember this rule as it needs to be easy for the audience to understand instead of cryptic as it should be said naturally.
7. When writing a cue, make sure you don’t repeat what is said in the clip! 
   Paraphrase the first line of audio or sum up what is going to be said. This is important and could sound rushed or un-thought of if the news reader is repeated in a clip, no body wants to hear the same thing twice in a row and this way it is possible for more detail.
8. Write names of people or places phonetically (if they aren't said how they are spelt). E.g, Peter Barfoot (PRON Pee-ter Bar-foot). To mispronounce a name on live radio could be very embarrassing or even offensive. It is important to have this pronunciation so that the newsreader isn't stuck when trying to pronounce it.
9. Round up statistics and put them into context. 
   E.g. 260,000 hectares = the size of three football pitches. 
   It is easier to understand and paints a picture in the mind of the audience.
10. Don’t use ‘today’ in your top line of the story! The audience should assume events are taking place ‘today’. You can use ‘this morning’ or ‘this afternoon’.
11. Don’t use quotations from people in the newsreader’s script. The only ‘quotes’ we should hear are from the person themselves.
12. Avoid abbreviations unless they’re very common/well-known. (E.g. NATO or the UN would be fine as they are commonplace.)
13. READ IT ALOUD to ensure it reads correctly! Sometimes words look fine written down but read aloud, they don’t make sense or might be an awkward tongue twister or an unintentional rhyme!

Practise

This article here is about Christ The King's expansion plans. The text is about the picture posted above but over the air, it would be impossible to describe a picture. Here is my attempt at a radio script using the rules above...

Christ The King College has published plans of expansion for the school. An exhibition of the plans will be held within the school this Thursday at eight-thirty pm. The Education Funding Agency told us they have big goals in mind " we want to deliver a vision for the school, we want to achieve it through consultation with both staff and governors". The picture of the proposed plans can be found on our website.

My script above uses the rules states, and shows how they can make an article understandable over the radio. I especially remembered rules 5, 7 and 12.

Conventions of Radio News Bulletins

The clip below is me talking about the conventions of radio news bulletins. These are important to remember when producing a bulletin and will be referred to in the future when making our own news bulletin.

Preliminary Task

For the preliminary task, a team of myself and three others decided that we would create a radio show that would feature a film trailer within it aimed towards a 30-50 year old male audience. We made sure that the audio used was free to use and made sure to do as much as we could ourselves. The radio show features a jingle created by a teammate and then a chat show, featuring me as the guest, playing the role of an actor. I made the clip from the film 'Redemption' which features sounds and my voice playing two tones, I created this using the computer program 'Audacity'. It then ends with a short discussion afterwards. The initial planning, script and complete clip are found below! As a class we recently visited the local radio station 'Isle of Wight Radio'. I found the trip very enjoyable as it gave me an insight to working in a radio and helped me to understand how broadcasting works on the stations, and generally. On the trip we saw a radio presenter perform a live news bulletin which was also very interesting as this allowed us to see how the equipment is used and where the presenters are reading the information from. We hope the knowledge gained from the trip will help with the preliminary task as we can apply some of the techniques used by Isle of Wight Radio into our own. The pictures below were taken on the trip.

Overall I think that our final piece from the preliminary task was successful. It is seen to include many conventions used in radio shows including a jingle, intro and clip. The finished piece also fitted into our target audience of male 35-50.

Summary of Radio Station Research

Above is a Google Slides presentation which gives basic facts about other radio stations. These are the stations in which were presented to us by classmates and so I made notes meaning I could type up a summary. I learnt some interesting facts especially about BBC 6 Music being the first ever digital station and also how young 1Xtra's target audience is. After the success using Google Slides previously on this blog, I did so again, above.

Radio Station Research - BBC Radio Solent/BBC Radio 1

Attached below are two studies of two radio stations. The third most listened to radio station in the country, BBC Radio 1. We also did a study into the south coasts local station, BBC Radio Solent. In these studies along with a teammate, we learnt a lot more about the two stations, some of which was a big surprise while other facts would be expected. Attached below are the Prezi's from both studies as well as a video of myself presenting it to a class.

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RAJAR

The above Microsoft PowerPoint is about RAJAR and its audience figures. The presentation includes many facts about the company and also statistics in which they have released in recent times. I found research into RAJAR very interesting as I did not previously know much about it. I liked making a presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint because I have used it for years and so it feels very familiar. However embedding into my blog proved difficult but I did it via LinkedIn's slideshare feature. I have not used LinkedIn before so in the end it turned out to be a good decision as it got me looking into the site which was often very interesting.

OFCOM

The above Google Slides presentation is all about OFCOM. The presentation includes many facts about the company and also includes some of the broadcasting rules. I found research into OFCOM very interesting as I had heard about it many times before and yet did not know many of Ofcom's other roles. Through making this presentation, I also was experiencing Google Slides for the first time and really liked using it, it was easy to use and made embedding into my blog far easier than some other sites and so I would be very tempted to use it again.

Alex Dyke and OFCOM

At the time of learning about OFCOM, there was a case featuring local DJ 'Alex Dyke' on BBC Radio Solent. As mentioned in the final slide, he was saying potentially offensive views over the air that meant many complaints were sent to OFCOM. As a class we discussed the appropriate punishment for the DJ and looked at the OFCOM rules. We looked at different types of punishment appropriate and then listened to the clip. We all agreed he was in breach and we referenced the 2010 Inequality Act which we felt he might have broken, we looked at what was included in this act and others and found this to be suitable. In and out of media lessons, we checked to see if OFCOM had made a decision. I was quite surprised at how long this took, the rules were very precise and so I thought it would be quick to decide but in a few weeks OFCOM published what rule he had broken, and it was the same as we had said as a group. It was interesting to learn about OFCOM and to experience the consequences of going against the regulations at the time of researching.

Radio Questionnaire

For the radio questionnaire task, I wanted to find out what stations people listened to the most, what time of day they listen to them and where they listen to them. I created a survey using Google Sheets which is an online piece of software I have not used before. However I found it very useful as it was quick and easy to make a survey that could be both sent to people online and printed. I gave the survey to 20 people, I purposely gave them to a wide range of ages and backgrounds so that the results would be fair and give a reliable result.

Once I had received the responses, I used Microsoft Excel to insert the statistics and create pie charts from them. I found the results very interesting and in some cases very predictable but in others not. When I come to make a radio broadcast, I will remember this information as it may change what is played over the air, e.g. most people listen to the radio in the car so I would not use siren noises in case it confused drivers. The results are posted in the pictures below.
We also decided to look at gender and age, as a team we all were the same age and was a mix of gender with 3 boys and 1 girl. We wanted to make sure we understood what differences there were between interests from girls and boys and so we separated the responses and found a key difference being which radio station they listen too, we found more boys listened to Radio 1 than girls and more girls listened to Capital, although both have similar target audiences, this is interesting and can make us consider why there are differences, possibly the slight difference in music or maybe the more chat shows featured on Radio 1. We will remember this when creating and targeting our own station because we will not want to isolate one gender and instead create a product equally aimed at both genders.

We also made sure we looked at age, the obvious difference here found was what the radio was listened too, older people listened more in the day and also a big difference was the choice of radio station. Although it may seem obvious, we wanted to challenge the idea of Radio 2 being listened to more by older people than young. However, from our research we found this was the case and there seem to be heavy links between age of listeners and age of music played as well as the age of the DJ. As young people ourselves, this therefore means a youth based radio station could be well suited for us to create.

UK Radio and Target Audience

Media Studies - Target Audience

"EVERY SINGLE MEDIA PRODUCT IS AIMED AT A SPECIFIC TARGET AUDIENCE!"

• The primary target audience is the people that the product is aimed at.
• The secondary audience are another group of people that might like the product but not the primary target.
• The tertiary audience are a group of people who the product is not aimed at but could potentially be enjoyed by.

When a media text is being planned, perhaps the most important question the producers consider is "does it have an audience?". If the answer to this is 'no', then there is no point in going any further. If no one is going to enjoy the product, the producers aren't going to make any money or get their message across. They use questionnaires , focus groups and comparisons to existing texts, and spend a long time finding out if there is anyone out there who might be interested in their idea.

Demographics - This is a way of grouping people together based on certain factors such as race,age,gender,economic status,level of education, income level and employment among others.

Psychographics Table

NRS Social Grade Classification Scale

The NRS Social Grade Classification Scale is a measurement of social grade, social status and occupation.

Social Grade A = Upper Middle Class = Higher managerial, administrative or professional.

Social Grade B = Middle Class = Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional.

Social Grade C1 = Lower Middle Class = Supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional.

Social Grade C2 = Skilled Working Class = Skilled manual workers.

Social Grade D = Working Class = Semi and unskilled manual workers.

Social Grade E = Those at the lowest level subsistence = State pensioners or widows (no other earner) , casual or lowest grade workers.

What are the Pros and the Cons of Demographics and Psychographics?

	Demographics	Psychographics
Pros	- If you use several categories together and use the NRS scale it can create a generally similar answer. - It can be cheap and easy to get information.	- People can quite easily fit into this category. - People can put themselves into this category more easily. - It doesn't constrain people to their education or gender.
Cons	- It generalises too much for example somebody in category B may have different interests to another person in the category. - It could be difficult to fit people into the NRS scale. - People can change professions quite a lot. - People could fit into more than one category on the NRS scale. - It could be outdated.	- People may feel that they fit into more than one category. - The information cannot be found on the census and therefore would take more time, effort and money to get this information.

How to radio stations use this?

Radio stations can use both methods of obtaining information and create an 'ideal' radio listener. An ideal listener is a radio producer's imagines, intended audience. It could be a group of individuals that will be addressed, persuaded or affected by what they are hearing. Imagining such an audience allows a producer to TARGET a particular group - thus ensuring their radio news bulletin appeals to those who are tuning in. This is so that every thing put out on their radio stations (song, news, chat and interview) should be aimed at this ideal listener because the output needs to be appealing to those who are listening and therefore listeners can be lost which means money can be lost. The BBC's ideal listener was 'Dave and Sue' who were the ideal listeners. The BBC local radio concept of 'Dave and Sue' became controversial saying that 'Project Bullseye' had turned radio into a 'blandly uniform comedy' and that the BBC were following these rules too strictly and not focusing enough on the local listeners.

The Ownership Of UK Radio

The attached video below, is about the ownership of the UK radio industry. The video was created using PowToon and uploaded to YouTube. I found PowToon an interesting site and is one I have not used before. It took longer to create as I had to adjust from using more conventional slides sites, but I will use the site in the future and try to add some animation which is a key part of PowToon.

The History of Radio

The Prezi below tells the story of radio from the very beginning through to the near future.

My First Thoughts

The concept of media (the main means of mass communication including television, radio, and newspapers) has always interested me, how do the BBC plan and select news items? What does a radio station do to appeal specifically to their audience? How do radio stations follow rules set by government and OFCOM? I have decided to pick media studies in hope to answer these questions and to gain knowledge of the media world which plays such an important role today. I am a radio listener and enjoy a variety of chat shows as well as music and have visited a local station which further fascinated me into the work behind radio. I am excited about the course and learning about planning, practice and performance when recording a radio show and hope the course can help me to learn this.