There are different styles, purposes and contents of music based programming. Radio is important for many different reasons.

Firstly, radio is important because it’s fairly easy to communicate with their target audience. This helps Radio broadcasters because sometimes they would want to hear what the public want to say. An example of this would be spoken word; public interactions or discussions are generally two of the easiest ways to communicate to the public. Secondly, Radio is also important because it is unlike any other technological device that the public use. Radio is used mostly portable compared to TV etc. Radio is on for 24 hours where as TV usually have a smaller limitation sometimes. With technology becoming more common, this makes it easier for people to listen to the radio whenever they want because they could use their phone or a radio in their car. Radio has a lot of history to show that it is important, during the times when the war was happening, they used radio to get information across but now it’s part of technology to show public interaction but still used for news, although radio is mostly used for music.

History of radio

Radio has a lot of history, it goes back a lots of years, and it starts roughly around the 1860’s. This means that there is going to be a lot of pioneers of the radio, this is because there is not just one person who invented the radio; there are several pioneers and scientists of the radio. Each individual scientist and inventor invents their own ideas but as time in the history of radio goes on, they began to build on other scientists and inventors ideas but they add their own invention and discoveries towards them. The scientist’s base their inventions on their own ideas that they discover and believe could progress into history towards radio.

Above is an Image of all the scientists and inventors of Radio. These are an example of who I will talk about.

James Maxwell Heinrich Hentz Guglielmo Marconi

Lee De Forest Reginald Fessenden Hans Christian Oersted

In the 1820’s there was a man named ‘Hans Christian Oersted’, Oersted was born in 1777. Oersted was the man who discovered the link between electricity or electric currents and magnetism, or electromagnetism. In the early times of electricity and when it was invented, it shows that we do take these everyday items for granted. It took great men like Hans Christian Oersted to discover them. Oersted’s discoveries were marked as a historical moment in time. Oersteds ideas are being used in the future and this shows how important his ideas were.

Oersted thought that there were links between the different forces in nature. Already the new science itself linked with electricity, it had demonstrated there was a link between electricity and chemistry as a result of Volta's work on cells. If this was a try then why not between electricity and magnetism? In 1812-1813, Oersted expressed these ideas in a book, despite the fact that it did not fit in with the thinking of the time.

In the 1860s a scientist named James Clerk Maxwell, James was a Scottish physicist, He himself predicted the existence of radio waves.

Then in 1886, another scientist named Heinrich Hentz, who was a German physicist, He proved how radio waves, like light and heat, could be projected into space itself using fast

variations of electric currents. As said, these are all just parts which helped make radio, they are very important in radio history and without them there wouldn’t be any radio. There are more pioneers of radio and I will carry on talking about them as they are a big part of history.

The business man whose full name is ‘Guglielmo Marconi’, was an Italian creator and he worked mostly in England. Marconi was interested by Heinrich Hertz’s discovery of radio waves and this is where the history of radio really began to build together. It is generally recognised by history itself that the first radio transmission was made on a temporary station set up by Guglielmo Marconi in 1895. Marconi realised that both of these themselves could be used to send and receive messages. In 1896, this was the important year when Marconi has his first radio transmission, the radio transmission was only one mile far and was a coded signal. This was the time when Marconi knew that now Radio was creating history and it has potential to start. If it wasn’t for all of the pioneers, scientists and businessmen then we wouldn’t have radio now, in the 20th century. It’s very unreal to think that. This was the same time, 1896, when Marconi offered the invention to the Italian government and it was unsuccessful and it was turned down. All of their feedback claimed that they didn’t like the idea. Marconi then experimented with his idea when he moved to England. In 1898 Marconi shows the results to the offices of a Dublin newspaper and made a sports event the first “public” broadcast. In 1897 Marconi opened the first radio factory in Chelmsford, Essex and established a radio link between Britain and France.

Lee De Forest was an inventor, He made it possible to use a weaker signal and it would still be used for radio. Lee De Forest did this by amplifying Reginald Fessenden was Canadian, he was an outstanding inventor, he worked in the U.S, and this was the place where he developed his own way to combine sound and radio carrier waves. His first attempt to transmit this mixed signal failed. His first attempt, he tried to combine the mixed signal to a receiver where the carrier wave would be removed and listener could hear the original sound. This failed for Fessenden. However, in the year 1906, Fessenden decided to use Alexanderson’s alternator, Fessenden made the first long- range transmission of voice.

Radio broadcasting in the UK first began in the 1920’s with Marconi’s experimental station 2MT located in Writtle which is in Essex. By the 1950’s, virtually every country had a broadcasting system, they’re aimed and operated by the government.

BBC Broadcasting service

BBC Radio started as a local radio because at the time it wasn’t possible to transmit the same programme to different areas. The BBC was formed in 1922 as a number of radio manufacturers came together to promote the new type of medium. The government of the day were abit worried about letting broadcasting being left to the market. The BBC gave evidence to the 1926 Crawford Committee, the managing director of the BBC said that “Broadcasting must be conducted in the future as it has been in the past, as a Public Service with definite standards.” The government accepted the findings of the committee and the BBC became a public corporation under a new Royal Charter.

RAJAR

The Radio Join Audience Research Limited, also named RAJAR, is a media organisation which is jointly owned by the BBC and the RadioCentre since 1992. RAJAR is the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK. 110,000 respondents are 15+ and this organisation would record in a diary what they watch or listen to within a week, this shows that this organisation has very reliable research because they’re recording it very straightforward themselves and this is a very simple way of doing so. Also this media organisation does planning, buying and selling advertising on commercial radio. Other organisations would use their research because they would need to know what shows to announce on the radio or on TV and what to advertise more of. A media organisation would use this research to know what radio to broadcast or have an advert in because it has got the most amounts of viewers and they would have to take into account the stations audiences’ demographics to figure out where they would place an advert into their radio broadcasts. Knowing how many people listen to each radio station is vital to the industry because a lot of money will be wasted if a radio station continues operating with no or hardly any listeners and the radio industry would not want this to happen. RAJAR is important to the radio industry because if they didn’t have RAJAR then radio stations wouldn’t have any measurements of radio audiences in the UK. No radio station in the UK would know who listens to what, they would want to know what their target audience would want to listen to and whether or not they should play a type of music genre or not. RAJAR are also important to radio stations because they measure who listens to each radio station, following from this, it would measure how well the radio station is successful. For example; if there is a radio station that doesn’t have a lot of listeners, then it would be clear that they are doing something wrong as they have a low statistic of listeners. Furthermore, this links to my next point of why RAJAR is important to radio stations. If RAJAR measure that a radio has a large amount of listeners and another radio station has a smaller amount of listeners, it is quite clear that advertisers would be more interested in the radio station with a larger amount of listeners. This is because advertisers would want to advertise to a larger audience so that more people will listen to the advert. Advertisers would also want their adverts to be played towards the right demographics too, so it is important that they choose the right radio station to broadcast.

Below is an example of RAJAR’s statistics. It shows the BBC radio stations listening share, average hours per head, reach percent, reach and the population.

This is an example of how important RAJAR is for radio stations. Without RAJAR then radio stations wouldn’t know how to improve and also how large their reach is or hours per head. This graph of radio stations’ statistics would be important because you can compare total hours and the reach. Reach is how many people listen to the radio station. Share is how many hours you would listen to a radio station for. BBC Radio 2 have the largest statistics for reach, Personally, I found this quite surprising because I thought BBC Radio 1 or 4 would be more popular as they are more listened too and popular in my opinion as a young person. I thought BBC Radio 4 would have the largest amount of reach because it has broken records for RAJAR previously because of the amount of listeners they had. BBC Radio 1 is what a lot of people I know listen to alot, this is a reason that I thought BBC Radio 1 might have had a larger amount of reach. BBC Radio 4 is about discussions and they seem to talk more about knowledge than radio 1 would. BBC Radio 2 have got the largest amount of listeners, this isn’t surprising because their target audience is about 20’s-40’s roughly, this shows that BBC Radio 2 is receiving a larger amount of listeners because their target audience are those who which listens to radio regularly.

Ofcom

The Office of Communications exists to check up on the advertising companies on radio and TV to make sure they aren’t breaking any specific regulations e.g. misleading customers or causing offense. Ofcom are a media organisation which are the official body in charge of dealing with complaints. They make sure that when listening to the radio or TV, the public are not exposed to any material that will offend them e.g. swearing or racism. Ofcom is important to radio stations because it checks that radio adverts are acceptable. Radio adverts would obviously be different to TV adverts, they would have to listen to radio adverts too make sure that they’re not showing offensive material. Ofcom licenses all of UK commercial television and radio services. Radio stations have to have a radio license before they can be heard by the public, this doesn’t include online radio stations.

I have researched Ofcom and their complaints. These are a list of the top seven most complained about radio shows to Ofcom since 2004.

7. Steve Penk at Breakfast – The Revolution 96.2FM

Steve received 57 complaints for his breakfast show on 14 January 2010. The Revolution radio had received 57 complaints because Steve Penk started to play Van Halen’s “Jump” as a woman threatened to leap from a bridge over the M60. He played the track following a request from a frustrated driver - It was not upheld. Although it was not upheld, Steve Penk sold The revolution radio because of this event, Although it was four years later, the radio was still being interviewed about it. I was surprised about this because she could’ve committed suicide because he was making a joke out of the situation, it’s a serious problem yet this has the least amount of complaints. This has less complaints than Number 2 out of 7 of Ofcoms complaints. Number two was about Busta Rhymes (who is a rapper) saying offensive lyrics in his music video. I find this very bad and I had to check twice that I was reading correctly. People listen to raps and hear swear words and all sorts of horrible words, but surely making a joke out of a lady who was going to commit suicide is much worse?

Although I have thought about this, I am hoping that the reason that Steve Penk’s had less complaints than Busta Rhymes was because more people saw the Rappers Music video and listened to his lyrics than how much viewers there were for The Revolution radio.

6. Jonathan Ross – BBC Radio 2

It was on May 9th 2009 when Ross made a joke about a Hannah Montana prize. Jonathan Ross said "If your son asks for a Hannah Montana MP3 player, then you might want to already think about putting him down for adoption in later life, when they settle down with their partner." 61 people thought it was a joke about homosexuals. Personally, I think it was clearly was a joke about homosexuals and offensive but altogether I don’t see how it was said in a humorous way. It should’ve been upheld as it is offensive to homosexuals. Ofcom didn’t do anything about this because they said “Jonathon Ross clearly presented it as a joke.” It was not upheld.

5. Adrian Durham – talkSPORT

In December 2010, talkSPORT received 95 complaints, it was not upheld. This was because listeners were concerned that Adrian Durham made derogatory comments during the bid to host 2018 World Cup and also references to the two winning countries for 2018 and 2022, this was Russia and Qatar.

4. Danny Kelly – talkSPORT

Listeners complained because presenter Danny Kelly appeared to have called former Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez a “nonce”, this is a term often being used as a slang word for a paedophile. This received 140 complaints on the 8th January 2011.

3. Jeni Barnett LBC 97.3

Ofcom received 190 complaints about a discussion which was for a parent’s right to not give their child the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (“MMR”) vaccination. The complaint wasn’t upheld. This happened on the 7th January 2009.

2. Busta Rhymes “Arab Money” – Galaxy Birmingham

On 29th November 2008 Radio station Galaxy Birmingham received 229 complained and Presenter Steve Sutherland was suspended. This was after people complained about hearing offensive lyrics in a new Busta Rhyme’s music video. The complaint was not upheld, eventually.

1. Russell Brand / Jonathan Ross – BBC Radio 2

18th October 2008. This was one of the most talked about complaints for radio. Russell brand mocked Andrew Sachs and also his granddaughter (who Russell had a relationship with, a few years before this prank call.) On the prank call Russell brand rudely and explicitly stated that he had sex with Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter before. This prank call has reportedly made Andrew Sachs and his granddaughter not speak and has broken the family apart. I listened to the prank call on Youtube as I had never heard it before, and I understand why it has almost 2000 complaints. One thousand and nine hundred and thirty

nine complaints were made because they thought Russell Brand was speaking to explicitly and they thought that he clearly isn’t allowed to say that on live radio as it would be offensive to Andrew Sachs but especially Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter. Ofcom fined the BBC £150,000 for the phone call which resulted in a number of good and talented people losing their jobs. This was inappropriate because no-one should talk about other peoples family members in horrible and offensive ways. Following from this, it would also be inappropriate to talk badly about others or even talk about your personal life if it could offend someone. Another reason it’s inappropriate is because his use of language was appalling as he spoke a lot of swear words and this is not allowed on the radio. This ban received 1939 complaints.

Genres

Most commercial stations serve a local or regional area. They are owned by one of three groups, this could be either Global, Bauer or UTV - which are increasing well in radio, they’re becoming popular. There are over 300 in the UK, mostly using FM frequencies and DAB.

Contemporary hits are a radio genre that plays current and re-current music that is determined by the top 40 charts. In this genre there are subcategories, these are the following: urban, rock and pop. These are subcategories as it suits their target audiences’ and preferences. An example of a contemporary hits radio show would be the BBC Radio 1. BBC Radio 1 are a radio station which are aimed for younger people. Nick Grimshaw was hired to make sure there is a younger audience listening with statistics that would increase. Before Nick Grimshaw there was an older man who was fired so that Nick Grimshaw would replace him, this is because the BBC believe that if their presenters are younger then so would the audience be, this is because their conversational interests would be completely different at a younger and older age. BBC Radio 1 is an example of the contemporary hits genre because on their website it says “BBC Radio 1. Home of the Official Top 40. Radio 1 is the biggest UK chart hits in pop, rock, indie, dance, Hip hop, RnB and everything else in between. BBC Radio 1 is targeted at 15-29 year olds and provides “some programming for younger teenagers”. It is clear that BBC Radio 1 is a contemporary style radio because they play a wide range of music genres. These include hip hop, rock, pop, dance drum and bass, dubstep, rap, electronica and house. The type of radio station BBC Radio 1 is that it’s a mix of broadcast or internet. They do mostly broadcasts but their radio is also on the internet too. The radio station BBC Radio is a public service because they don’t play adverts.

Adult Contemporary is similar to the easy listening and soft rock. Adult contemporary became popular in the 1960s. An example of there are Magic or Smooth FM. As I mentioned earlier, these are similar radio genres. Magic have over 2 million listeners. Magics’ target audience is adults because it’s the adult contemporary genre. The Magic website doesn’t state an age group but it does have a link which shows that they do have Adult Dating this shows that Magic’s target audience is older than young adults, it would mostly be about 35 and older. The type of radio station would be broadcast and internet. It is internet because at the bottom of their website page it had “ways you could listen live to Magic Radio” this included monitor, mobile, radio and TV. These are all types of internet which Magic use to broadcast on. This radio station is commercial because it has adverts.

The Gold Radio format is a genre of radio. Gold radio is when a radio station plays specifically old or classic music. An example of a radio station which plays the gold format would be Gold radio. This is because they play older and classic tracks which are often refered to as “oldies”. Gold plays music which is a mix of classic tracks from “artists who a while back dominated decades of music history. Examples of artists they play from different era’s are such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, Blondie, The Who, David Bowie, The Beach Boys, Diana Ross, The Eagles, Rod Stewart, Stevie Wonder and Elton John – there’s just a few” This was quoted from the Gold website as this is what they explained to be examples of eras that they often play. This type of radio is targeted at the people of the era that grew up with that type of music. This type of radio genre would be targeted for adults because this is popular music too them and it would usually be what they are interested in. Although younger people can listen to this radio too it just isn’t their main target audience. Their target audience is mainly an older audience who have an interest in classic tracks like the ones above. They use the internet and also broadcasts. Their radio station is commercial.

The classical radio genre is a genre which plays subcategories of classical music. The classical radio genre is made up from subcategories such as: “Avant-Garde, Baroque, Chamber Music, Chant, Choral, Classical Crossover, Early Music and High Classical” These are all very historical or even slightly religious. An example of a radio station from the classical genre would be Classic FM. Classic FM is the UK’s only 100 per cent classical music radio station. This means that if anyone in the UK is interested to listen to classic music on the radio then it would be Classic FM who they listen to. This would attract a big audience because they are the only radio station who only plays classical music in the UK. Their target audience would be an older age group who are interested in classical music. They specifically do broadcasts but do use internet also. In the classical music genre there is a lot of history. It is important that you understand the history. Classic FM does broadcasts and is using the internet. Classic FM is a public service as they don’t use adverts or any sort of commercial genre. As for part of classical music history, Renaissance Classical Music appeared in the mid-1500s. In the mid-1500s, a bishop commented that music composed for the church should reflect the meaning of the words so that the listeners would be moved to saint and religious beliefs. The bishop wanted the churches to play music which was expressive and had true meaning as to why they were there and what history was in religion. This statement seems usual today but in the mid 1500’s it was a new idea. Medieval composers’ music wasn’t as expressive as they were supposed to have been. Although, it was the rediscovery of the ancient Greek ideas, this then inspired musicians to create music which could relate to their ideas.

Current is new music which contemporary also play. Although they also play Recurrent too. Recurrent is a group of songs that aren’t in the top 40’s and have been released a few years ago but they are still played regularly regarding this problem.

The specialist genre is a radio format which specialises a range of similar music genres where a radio presenter will show lots of new unheard music. An example of a specialist radio station would be XFM. This is because it is the Global Radio alternative music station

which is recommended a lot because it plays the newest and best alternative music which ranges from indie, hip-hop, rock and dance. Recently John has been focusing on the more indie and rock side of the alternative genre. Xposure with John Kennedy on XFM where John Kennedy presents the 10pm – 1am weekday show. This is popular on XFM because while most of their daytime shows try to stick to these genres, John Kennedy’s late night (10pm – 1am) weekday show is known for it’s wide variety of specific genre music that it plays. This show has been thought to introduce: The xx, Mumford & Sons, Lianne La Havas, Lucy Rose, Ben Howard, Michael Kiwanuka, MIA, Jamie T to Xfm’s listeners. Xfm’s target audience are people who have an interest in alternative music and who would stay away from Top 40 stations. This is because people who are interested in finding new music are looking beyond the obvious Top 40 and want to find addictive music that interests them. John Kennedy’s show targets the more “eclectic and tastemaker” listeners. This would possibly mean the target audience would be 14-25 year old students who always want to find out about new good music. Although that doesn’t mean their wouldn’t be listeners which are older or younger as that is definitely not the case. Xfm is a public service and uses internet.

Chosen Era is a radio format where a radio station plays music for just one specific era i.e 60’s,70’s, 80’s, 90’s etc. An example of a chosen era radio show would be Absolute radio (80’s) because it’s a radio station which just plays music from a certain time era i.e the 80’s. Absolute radio is a local commercial radio station which is digital as they use the internet. Absolute radio is the only 80’s radio station in the UK. This would impact on their listeners because it means the more people who want to listen to 80’s music on the radio, the more listeners they will receive as they have little competition. Their target audience is people who enjoy the music as well as the era itself. This would mean their target audience would be older people as younger people could find out about the 80’s and be interested in it but their wouldn’t be enough young people for the absolute radio to base their target audience on.

Broadcasting types

There are many ways that radios can broadcast. There are different types as well as in-store and internet and they can all be accessed in different ways. There is also Terrestrial radio which is also known as AM or FM radio. There are different ways which you can listen to terrestrial radio like in your car or with a normal radio although terrestrial radio is said to be becoming less common than it used to be. There are two different types of broadcast radio stations such as public service or commercial. They develop their music playlists for their target audiences. Public Service stations have specific demographic audiences to appeal to. Who they are aiming to reach is another question of what they will play during their radio show, this is why they plan, of course. Commercial Radio Stations often aim to reach for larger audiences. The difference between Public service and Commercial Radio stations is that their demographic audiences have a size difference, public is smaller than commercial. Commercial radio stations reach their audience by playing a variety of music, they also use public interaction to let the audience decide songs to listen too, the audience do this by contacting the radios social network or by phone.

BBC Radio 1 Heart KMFM0

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4

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Content of radio stations

spoken word music sound effects

From the data I have collected whilst listening to these three radio stations, I can see that there is a lot more spoken word than sound effects. The data for KMFM looks very even comparing to the others, not including sound effects. KMFM and heart didn’t have any sound effects but the BBC Radio 1 did. I think the reason for this is that when I was listening, BBC Radio 1 had a lot of spoken word which involved a lot of public interaction which then went onto sound effects. This only happened for BBC Radio 1. For example, BBC Radio 1 was with Matt Edmondson and Scott Mills. They had a game named the ‘Mayor of Where’ which had sound effects too when it started, during and then when It finished, it had a signature effect which had singing of the title of the public interaction and then music. Showing the data for BBC Radio 1, I think it has a lot of music, spoken word and a little bit of more sound effects than others because of their target audience. The target audience is a lot younger than the other two radio stations, this would be why they have involved more. Their music was more new and for a younger target audience. Heart had music like Alicia Keys and KMFM had even older music like the Pet shop boys, which for my age is something I didn’t want to listen too. The radio stations both Heart and KMFM seemed to apply too more of an older target audience. This is especially comparing with BBC radio which seemed to be more interesting to a younger target audience. Heart and KMFM had a lot of adverts which made me think of people who would be listening to the radio in their car rather than through their earphones at college. This is because 5 minutes in a car listening to adverts on Heart and

KMFM were both hard to ignore through earphones but for more of an older target audience, this wouldn’t bother them. BBC Radio 1 had more news than the other two radio stations, they had a two minute news round which included a signature tune and then spoken word, Matt Edmondson said ‘we will be back with more news in half an hour’ this shows that they regularly schedule news into their radio station.

BBC Radio 1 Heart radio KMFM radio0

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Spoken word

Announcements Radio talks public interactionsMagazines programmes Radio discussions/debates News

From the data that I have collected whilst listening to these three fairly popular radios named BBC Radio 1, Heart Radio and KMFM radio. From the data above which shows how much spoken word that the three radio stations, it shows that BBC Radio 1 has more spoken word than Heart Radio and KMFM radio. The magazine programmes are all at the same level too which is unusual but i think it was just because of the time of day I was listening, daytime but almost evening so people are becoming less busy.

BBC Radio and Absolute 80’s Radio show analysis

BBC Radio 1’s forma is Contemporary Hits Radio and it’s target audience is young people aged 15-29 year olds. Absolute radio is a chosen specialist radio as it plays a certain era, this would be the 80’s for Absolute radio. This is because they’re interested in this type of music. I have chosen these two radio stations to listen to compare and criticise because these two radio stations are both different in terms of format and target audiences. These two radio stations would be appropriate to criticise because of their differences. I also want to use these two radio genres for the two types of radios for my two different target audiences that i will create for my assignment later on in the radio unit. I started listening to BBC Radio 1 at 3:13pm on a Friday. This was presented by Scott Mills.

I have colour coded the listening to make it easier.

Song = Red

News=orange

Speech=light green

Phone in= light blue

Jingle= dark blue

Advertisement= pink

Listening to BBC Radio 1 for 30 minutes I heard the content of the following:

Song- Real love by Jess Glare – 15:13

Song – Hey by Slaves – 15:15

Song- You got the love by Florence and the machine (2 minutes later) 15:17

News/speech – Rumours about celebrities and recent events that have been happening.

Speech – Introduction of speech to then play a George Ezra song. 15:19

Song- Did you hear the rain by George Ezra. 15:19

Phone in – Dave Grill talking about Phone parties and talking about Fearne cotton. 15:22

Song – Together by Ella Eyre. 15:25

Phone in- Then the Phone in carries on, they are talking about Dave Grills career for a few seconds.

Jingle- BBC Radio 1

Speech/advertisement – Radio weekend speech/advertisement with Scott Mills speaking it.

Jingle – BBC Radio 1

Song – see you again by Wiz khalifa

Speech – DJ announces theradio and whats coming up soon.

Jingle – Newsbeat, spoke by DJ

News – Celebrity updates/events –

News-Sports – football scores and talking interview as evidence too what the DJ said about the team. Transfer information update. This goes on for four minutes.

Jingle – Sports jingle

Jingle- BBC Radio 1 Jingle

Song – sheil by Jamie T

Song – Blank space by Taylor swift

Then it ended.

BBC Radio 1 is a contemporary radio which is intended to age 15-29 year olds, which is younger people. As a result to this, the radio station played content which was suited to their target audience. They have done this by showing appropriate music like Pop, and songs which are in the charts or have been recently. It is good that the BBC Radio 1 have done this because it means that their target audience will constantly like listening to their music which is an important aspect to music based programming. Although their music is pop, their is still other music which is popular but not in the charts. BBC Radio 1 don’t play

official adverts but they do have Jingle music in the background whilst a DJ promotes an event, this is similar. BBC Radio 1 promoted the Radio weekend, this is so that younger people could go to the event as a result. I think the older majority of the younger target audience could go but not age 15 as they wouldn’t be interested, but it is good that they advertised it to their target audience because it is appropriate. Speech is BBC Radio 1’s strongest content, alongside with music. Speech at BBC Radio 1 is very good because they have less of a structured script and each DJ has more of a personality which the style of presentation is mostly conversational although their are news and information in their style too. But BBC Radio 1’s DJ’s overall would all have personalities with the style of conversational because sometimes they talk about topics which can lead them into a non-structured debate, which is extremely difficult but the radio announces public interaction sometimes which show that young peope are enjoying their not-so-informational-debate. For example; BBC Radio 1 could have Scott Mills with another DJ, they then could speak about a topic which isn’t structured and then they would play a public interaction which would be from their social media which says a young person has tweeted something like “Enjoying listening to BBC Radio 1, Scott Mills talking about Greg James whilst he is next too him is soo funny!”. It shows that younger people do intend to want to listen to conversational presenters with personality which BBC Radio 1 have a lot of. BBC radio 1 have used jingles, this is because it is more effective than a DJ announcing they’re listening to BBC Radio 1. It attracts attention when you’re listening too the radio. Although its not as important as speech, but younger people would like this because some jingles announce games which the presenters play with the other DJ’s, this could be good because younger people enjoy them, especially when they call celebrities even though they must be careful with what they say, they don’t want to be offensive as the Russell brand incident. BBC Radio 1 introduce news into their radio shows because they want younger people to be aware of what’s going on in the UK and around the world, this helps the generation as a whole. Their news included celebrites, general news, events and sports. This is suited to a younger target audience because they care about what celebrities are doing, where as older people don’t care as much. Sports is good to include too as a lot of younger people enjoy football so its always good to hear. Their target audience would want to be aware of all of these aspects and BBC Radio 1 have included them all for this reason. These contents are added to what the Radio station looks like on its website because all of they’re shown with subcategories on the radio stations music programme on its website. This shows that they know their target audience uses a lot of internet, so that’s why they including it in their what they look like on the internet, to their website.

I then listened to be Absolute radio (80’s) their target audience is for whoever likes the era itself. I am listening to Absolute Radio (80s) at 10pm.

I have colour coded the listening to make it easier.

Song = Red

News=orange

Speech=light green

Phone in= light blue

Jingle= dark blue

Advertisement= pink

Listening to Absolute Radio 80’s for 30 minutes I heard the content of the following:

Song – Thorn in my side by Evrythmics

Jingle – Absolute radio

Advertisement – Isle of whight festival

Jingle – Absolute radio

Advertisement – Holiday Inn express online

Advertisement – Monster.co.uk CV building website

Advertisement – Absolute radio 70’s listen digital

Jingle – Absolute 80’s

Song – Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac

Jingle – Absolute radio 80’s

Song – Getting away with it by Electronic

Jingle – Absolute radio 80’s

Song – Gold by Spandau ballet

Jingle – Absolute radio 80’s

Advertisement – Absolute radio App

Advertisement – Getdigitalradio.com

Advertisement – Heat summer anthems

Jingle – Absolute 80’s

Song – Dancing in the dark by Bruce Sprinsteen

Jingle – Absolute radio 80’s

Song – I don’t wanna dance by Eddy grant

Jingle – Absolute 80’s

Song – Edge of Heaven by Wham!

Absolute Radio 80’s is a commercial radio which is intended for people who like the era. As a result to this, the radio station should show content which is suited to this target

audience. They have done this by showing music which are 80’s classics and that everyone who loves the 80’s will definitely know them. It is good that Absolute Radio have done this because it means that their target audience will like listening to their radio constantly because what they like about it, they always include it all the time. This shows how important music is to radio. Absolute Radio only play popular music from the 80’s to suit their target audience. Absolute Radio play alot of adverts, usually one after the other at a time or just one on its own. Absolute Radio also use jingles, when I was listening I realised that they play jingles alot but they include different ones each time i.e Absolute Radio or Absolute Radio 80’s. Absolute Radio didn’t have any speech when I listened to them. They didn’t include any speech because they know their target audience just want to listen to 80’s music and nothing else. This means that the listeners will keep interested in the radio station and will listen more regularly because they like it. Absolute Radio didn’t include any News either, they avoided this because with their target audience, no-one wants to know about what’s happening today. Absolute Radio promoted themselves alot when I listened to them. They included alot of jingles regularly but also advertisements about themselves. I didn’t like that because it was constant, I felt like they wanted me to know them every second of listening to Absolute Radio. Absolute Radio also promoted the isle of wight festival. This is similar to when BBC Radio 1 promoted the Radio weekend. BBC Radio 1 did this is so that younger people could go to the event as a result. it was good that they advertised it to their target audience because it is appropriate. However, listening to the adverts from Absolute Radio 80’s, their adverts didn’t suit their target audience at all. When I was listening to Absolute Radio 80’s they played an advert which was about a new album release called heat summer anthems and it had pop singers from now (2015) which is unsuitable to their target audience. As I mentioned earlier, Absolute Radio didn’t include news and speech because if they did then it would contain news which isn’t from the 80’s and the listeners don’t want that. This is why I thought it was s inappropriate to their target audience because Absolute Radio 80’s listeners would want to hear 80’s music and their would be a big chance that they’re not interested in music from 2015 so the advert doesn’t really benefit anyone. BBC Radio 1 had used their adverts to their target audiences’ preferences where as Absolute Radio 80’s hasn’t. Absolute Radio 80’s has no speech because it isn’t appropriate to their target audience but this is the opposite to BBC Radio 1. Absolute Radio 80’s presenter was Anonymous because no-one spoke. Absolute Radio 80’s includes no public interaction but that is what they want, to just listen to 80’s music for a while. I liked a few of the songs that Absolute Radio 80’s played but their routine was boring and almost annoying because I hate adverts and I don’t think having jingles too often is effective either and Absolute Radio 80’s had both of them.

Bibliography

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio

http://radiotoday.co.uk/2014/03/ofcoms-seven-biggest-radio-complaints/

http://www.rajar.co.uk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radio

http://www3.northern.edu/wild/th100/radio.http

http://didyouknow.org/history/radiohistory/

http://www.musicgenreslist.com/music-classical/

https://allthingsmusicfjp.wordpress.com/birmingham-ormiston-academy/music-based-programming-u44/specialist-radio-shows/

http://www.rajar.co.uk/listening/quarterly_listening.php

http://www.magic.co.uk/

http://www.mygoldmusic.co.uk/

http://www.classicfm.com/

http://absoluteradio.co.uk/80s/