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.