1. Radio Production Evaluation
Leanne Hartland
ElectroBuzz

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media?
With this radio project we made it as professional as we could. We have used a traditional structure as we know this is a logical order for a news bulletin; it works well and links together easily. It is also quite a traditional radio piece due to the sound codes and fundamentals we have used. We have used different textures, shapes and cadences throughout it depending on the news type; as a serious story has a monotone cadence but the entertainment news is more rhythmic; this is so the audience can get an idea of what type of story it is from the way we are speaking as well as what we are saying.
All of these techniques we’ve used make our radio piece sound realistic, but not simple; as instead of doing just any radio news bulletin we’ve done a college one which has caused us to challenge the forms of it due to our target audience. As our target audience are younger we cut out parts of news section which according to surveys we did college students aren’t interested in:
Traffic
Less World Wide News
Only a brief bit of information about the weather
This is how we have challenged the conventions of existing news bulletins.

3. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
We have been quite biased and stereotyped a lot when deciding upon the content for our radio piece based on our target audience. We did our research to work out what group of people were common around college and which ones would actually listen to our radio, as these were the ones we wanted to aim our radio piece at.
We had to do this though if we wanted our radio to be a success, stereotypes are always made and choosing the most popular stereotype as your target audience is going to make you media production also popular, which is what we want with ours.
Our research described our stereotype as the “typical indie student” They’re normally social, fun, friendly and like music and local news.
Our research showed that this “group” of people were popular within college and that our content could appeal to them and a large amount of the college.
As our target audience are quite young compared to most radio station’s audience we had to make sure our bulletin was interesting and entertaining for them. This made us portray the news in a different way than most radio’s. We made it sound less serious and so it focus’ more upon the local area, which is like our audience do with themselves and what they’re aware of. This represents the society of younger people and their perceptive of what goes on within the world and how they react and treat it; as we are also within our target audience so how we treat the news when putting it in the bulletin is a small representation of our audience.

4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
South Cheshire College would be the priority institution to broadcast our radio production as that is where it is based as it’s a local radio for the college students.
The only other places that would be able to broadcast our radio production would be colleges or universities due to the niche target audience we have of students. It would suit any college or university if the content was edited to suit the area; which could easily be done; as there is a lot of local news within our production, but the style and structure would be suitable in any location.
If they were to broadcast our news bulletin on the radio it would benefit both the students and staff of the college because:
Students
Could be updated about the college easily
Could help out with the radio and maybe use it as work experience
Staff
Would be able to get information out to the students easily

5. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience was obviously going to be college students as it is a college based radio; specifically South Cheshire College.
We chose this target audience purposely knowing that we could work with this idea well as we ourselves are students in South Cheshire College, so they are like us, making it easy for us to know what they want from a news bulletin. It also made it easy for us to access information and news that could be used in the bulletin.
After doing questionnaires and research we came up with a specific “group” of people we were going to have our target audience, the “typical indie student” As this “group” of people is popular throughout college. Then with more research and inevitably stereotyping we came up with a description of our target audience:
Likes: Music, gigs, parties, socialising, the internet, magazines, fashion (e.g.. Tompan/TopShop, H&M, Fred Perry)
Are: Friendly, fun, experimental, influenced by celebrities

6. How did you attract/address your audience?
To interest our target audience we made the content of our radio specialised for them, as after doing our research we realised they are more interested in local and entertainment news, rather than world wide news. So we made sure we shortened the world wide news and made it link into local news to keep their attention. We also chose the credit crunch as the main story to link from world wide news to local news as it’s a topic which could be effecting them and they need to be aware of. Entertainment news was focused on a lot as this appeared to be the part of the news they are most interested in, we also included the music charts which is popular music and stereotypically our audience have a big interest in music. This is also the hunger fundamental that we used here, as it was the most recent, up to date charts, we also did this with the news and sports stories.
We used rock jingles and beds as this is a very popular type of music which appeals to our audience.
Casual, easy to understand language was used so they don’t have to concentrate when listening and can just listen to it easily as students typically do.
We also generally used a fast tempo, high energy when we could to keep them attracted, but depending on the stories we sometimes changed the tempo and cadence to help them understand and relate with the news.

7. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout this project I have learnt about the editing of radio and putting lots of separate recordings together. That the timing and flow between them needs to sound right. Also how they are actually put together in the studio using Adobe Audition. We used this with the technician to put together our radio piece at the end to get the final product.
I also learnt about linking jingles and beds into the script to sound right, the relationship that music has with voice. How they aren’t to be over or under used, that fading them gradually can be quite effective and how the choice of jingle or bed makes a big difference to the listeners opinion on the radio production. As if a fun jingle is played before an important, emotive subject then that simply doesn’t sound right and would confuse the listener, so they need to be appropriate and fit the topic and radio station well.
Within the recording process I learnt about how non-diegetic sound is important within a vox pop to make it sound realistic and like the situation is actually happening. Also how it’s important that the volume of the voices when recording in the studio should be consistent otherwise when edited together it doesn’t sound consistent.

8. Looking back at you preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in progression from it to the full product?
The main thing I have learnt a lot of throughout this project is about writing a radio script and how important the use of structure and sound codes are.
The order of the structure makes a lot of difference as to whether people continue listening throughout all of the broadcast. To make sure they do you have to:
Make it obvious that you’re changing topics by using sound codes
Use short sentences to make it more interesting for the listener
Make sure that the first sentence is always be interesting and goes straight into the item to make people want to listen to it.
I also learnt about how to describe and talk about the story, to tell stories as if you were talking to one person so the listener feels like your talking to them, to read it out loud and check that someone else understands it all as you may but you need to make sure many people can due to the large amount of listener.
Another thing I learnt about is the production process. How without a good amount of research and planning you won’t be fully clear on what is needed within the radio broadcast relating to the target audience, structure and contents as research and planning is required to make sure all of this suits and fits together well.