Radio

I have completed listening diaries in lesson to a range of different factual programming and news
programmes. In this blog I will write a report that will compare the different types of speech based programmes.


Radio in the UK is broken into three different types. Commercial, Public and Voluntary. The different types of radio are funded by different things.


Commercial is funded by the adverts plays throughout the day, this is their main source of income. Other sources of income may include T shirts, paid competitions and sponsorship. A commercial radio is also found across the country but will be broken up into areas. For example CAPITAL FM have a North East station and a North West station including many more. This is because when their listeners turn into their station they hear a local accents rather an someone in the North East listening to a London accent.

Capital FM caters for a younger audience which is why they play a lot of music and keep it very fast paced. Their news will always be news that that audience may be interested in. For example there will be a lot of Universities advertising on this radio station because that is the audience they are wanting to get.

Public radio is funded by the TV licences fee that the tax payers of the UK must pay for. This TV licence fee is their main source of income but they can also sell T shirts and other things like that, but they are not allowed sponsorship. The UKs public radio is the BBC, the BBC is not allowed adverts on anything they play because of the licence fee, if they were to play adverts from other companies a part from the BBC they would lose their licence and would become commercial.

The BBC have a range of different types of different types of show, they have Radio 1 that is also based on the younger audience. Their news show will only show stories that are relevant to that audience.

Radio 4 has a completely different catering audience to Radio 1. They offer news and current affairs but also have some drama, readings and comedy. This tells me that the show is based on a much older audience to radio 1's. They cater this by reading news that will be more interesting for this audience. For example they may show stories about new books that are popular in their age group or even have call ins based around their interests.




Voluntary radio is very different to the others, they are paid for by the people of that local area or even business' in that local area. You can find voluntary radio anywhere, but they are commonly found in hospitals.
The hospitals radio station is different. Their audience is very wide and ranges across different age groups.

Radio lollipop is clearly only in a children's hospital which makes their audience much easier to cater to. On a children's radio station it will purely on to keep the children entertained. On this type of radio they will probably have children's music, e.g. Disney songs. Also they may read stories on this station rather than news as they would not be interested.

Other hospital radio shows will cater for older people rather than children, they do this by having more serious news from around the world and this news will probably also have a lot of medial based news with it being based in a hospital.


There are many different types of elements that make up a speech package, these include';

Presenter - The presenter is the main person that controls the show, they will introduce guests, ask the questions and even if the sound goes to news it will always go back to the presenter.

Reporter - The reporter is a person that is employed by the station. He will go around the country or even the world to do news reports on current events. For example if there is a terrorist attack in America the reporter will have to fly out to America to do a news report on it.

Interviewees - The interviewees will change depending on the type of program. For example they will interview victims or a crime on a news show that is reporting that crime, but if the show is about celebrity news they may interview someone in that type of business or even the celebrities themselves

Correspondents - A correspondent is not the same as a news reporter but they are used in news stories. A correspondent is someone they will interview about a news story that knows a lot about it. For example if there was a terrorist attack in America the correspondent would be someone like the police chief that they are interviewing.

Experts - The experts are used in news stories to give a professional opinion on the story. For example if there is a health concern in the news stories like with the horse meat scandal. When the news started breaking and people were getting very concerned, news stations brought in professionals to tell people that rumours are true or if they are not.

Vox Pops - A vox pop is a part of a radio show, it is used when an interviewer was not in the studio to be interview and was pre recorded elsewhere. For example if a news story was reported on a week ago and a radio show is talking about it again, they can use these vox pops of previous interviews and play them on their show.



Examples of factual programming: A station that is all about the factual side of radio is Radio 4 by the BBC. This station does a number of things that are based around the older audience 35+. The show I listened to on BBC radio 4 was all about ringing in and asking a question to experts that were on the show, e.g. Carers, doctors, money mangers etc. I also listened to one of their shows called "Saturday Drama" This type of show would not be popular with younger audiences which is why they are not the target audience. The younger audience are a target for BBC Radio 1. On a station like Radio 4 they will have a lot of discussions into important issues in the world and will give listeners a chance to call in and join in with the discussion or even ask questions. The discussions are not always about important issues, they can also range from magazine news, health, books etc. The music on this type of station will always be quite old, nothing like Radio 1 which will be based around the newest music. This type of station has also been shown to play documentaries about anything. Radio 4 have recently played one which was about Shakespeare, but these documentaries are not as long as they would be on TV.




Examples of News programming: Some radio stations have their entire station based around current events, or News. An example of this would be Sky News Radio, this radio station plays 24hr news from around the world. The age group that would listen to this station would be the older generations, e.g. 30+ When younger people are driving or listening to the radio, they are more likely to listen to a station based around music and not news. Although almost all radio stations at some point will read out some news that will be interesting to that audience. A News show will every so often read out the News Bulletins of the day of the main stories and then will go into a lot of detail on these stories, this is not the same as other stations. They will just read out the bulletins and not expand on them like this type of station.



Ethics and regulations in radio:


Radio stations have a lot of problems with ethics and regulations, they are ;

Stereotypes - Radio shows are allowed to stereotype others but they must be prepared for angry viewers, this is why stereotyping in radio is ethically wrong but not illegal. If a stereotype has been done to cause offence to someone else, that is not allowed and is illegal.
For example if capital FM did a stereotypical voice of someone from France as a joke, if someone from france just happened to hear that, they may get offended but it was only ethically wrong. If they did that accent with the purpose of offending or casuses harm to the listener this would be illegal and is stopped by their regulations.

Privacy - The privacy regulations in radio are there to stop any personal information getting out to the public. This could be anything from their phone number to how much they earn. A person may not want this information out to the public which is why it is not only unethical, it is illegal. Giving out personal information could also endanger them, for example if BBC give out the home address of a politician, there could be someone that will use this information to plan attacks or even terrorist attacks.

Cause harm or Offence - A radio show should not causes any harm of offence to anyone. If a news show was to do this, it is not only unethical, it is illegal. For example if a radio show made a segment about how much they had a race, or a group of people, This would have the intension to causes harm and offence to them. This is why these regulations exist.



I listened to other radio stations and wrote down my findings in a listening diary. I found there are huge differences between radio stations within the BBC, for example the difference between BBC Radio 1 and Radio 4.

The main cause of these differences is simply their target audience. The target audience for Radio 1 is for a young audience 15-21. You can hear that this by how fast paced Radio 1 is, as teenagers have very short attention spans if they spend too much time talking about the same thing, the listeners will lose their interest. They must make sure they are always jumping from one thing to the next and you can hear this yourself by listening to radio 1, were you cannot if you listen to Radio 4. Radio 4 is for a older audience, at least 30-35+. You can instantly see and hear this by looking at their schedule or listening to the show, they are slower paced than Radio 1 because this audience does not have short attention spans, also when the audience is 40+ the presenter will have to slow down how fast they speak because it will become hard to understand if they talk fast, like on Radio 1. Also Radio 1 has a lot of music and short news breaks, but Radio 4 has big news breaks and little music, they also have more factual shows on their station. This would not be interesting to a young audience.



If you were to listen to both radio stations side by side, it would be obvious to you to know which target audience fits to what station. Radio 1 will be playing the newest music, the short news bulletins, comedy breaks listening to the presenters, short phone ins from listeners. Radio 4 will be slowly going through their news in more detail, this is because an older audience wants details were younger just want the head lines or small details. Radio one will also have long discussions about important things, were Radio 1 will be talking about funny stories for a short while.

The target audiences tastes will control how the entire station runs. A younger audience does not want to be stuck listening to the same thing for more than 3-5 minutes, but an older audience show could be listening to the same thing for 30minutes.
The language is also very different in these two different age groups, on Radio 1 they will use current slang and fast paced speech, but on Radio 4 they would not use slang, they will use full sentences and be not too slow but much slower.
The content of them both is differs in a lot of ways, the music is years a part, e.g. Radio 1- current Radio 4- oldies music. The news stories: Radio 1 - young news - celebrities, technology and important news. Radio 4 - important news, definitely not technology news as this audience will not be interested in that.