Foundation production G321

Research & Planning

Preliminary Task

The preliminary task stated that the group I was working with needed to create a 30-40 second radio clip, in addition this task also has to include a guest to be part of the show. However, before we got ahead in recording we had to gather around a table together and discuss what will be said. We, therefore, were left with a script/plan that needed to be written in order for the roles to equally be set for everyone in the group.

Preliminary exercise: the introductory music/jingle for a show on the radio with a presenter introducing and greeting their guest (who must respond) and playing an archive sound clip relating to the guest (approximately 30-40 seconds duration in total).

All audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Group meeting

This is our group meeting, where we gathered around a table together to discuss what will be said in our 30-40 second radio show, and how we will achieve this.

Production:

Production roles:

Patricia - host, composer

Hevi - guest
Panagiotis Karachalios - Editor

Final Script

Flowchart

This is a flowchart that shows every stage of our 30-40 second preliminary task

What our show is about?

In our Preliminary Task we decided to produce a show about a singer that tells us everything about her tour and new album. The final edit consist of a presenter, music, a jingle as well as the guest themselves, the production sounds well organised but did include some faults, which we would learn from an then improve in our final production.

Editing

When editing, I felt that the structure of the broadcast was important as stacking each recording on top of each other wouldn't sound like a radio broadcast. Therefore, I decided to structure it like this: Intro Jingle, Presenter, Guest, Presenter, Outro Jingle.

Final Preliminary Broadcast

This is the complete radio bulletin with everything that I was tasked to use annotated. I also expanded on my decisions when editing.

Mass Media & Me

Mass media is the diverse use of technology that is intended to reach the vast majority of the general public. Mass media by no means has significantly evolved over time. The most common platforms of mass media are magazines, newspapers, radio, television, and the internet. However, today, the internet is the most relevant form of mass media.

The use of mass media plays a huge role in my daily lifestyle, it has made communication and interactions so much easier, just about everything can be done in an instant with just a click of a mouse. On a daily basis, I use different sorts of media, such as Instagram, Snapchat, and what's app.

Snap chat is the popular mobile app that allows you to send videos and pictures, both of which will self-destruct after a few seconds of a person viewing them. Snapchat is also a fun messaging app. At its core, Snapchat is used to send photos and videos, called snaps, to friends. I personally, use Snapchat to share a moment with chosen friends through photos and videos. I find this a much more personal experience.

Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing, and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, and share them either publicly or privately on the app, as well as through a variety of other social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. I personally, use Instagram to share photos of myself with a selective amount of friends that do the same, we exchange likes and comments. I also use Instagram to watch funny videos and pictures and share them on direct message with a few close friends.

WhatsApp is a free download messenger app for smartphones. WhatsApp uses the internet to send messages. images, audio or video. The service is very similar to text messaging services however, because WhatsApp uses the internet to send messages, the cost of using WhatsApp is significantly less than texting. Within the new update you will also see that you can call just about anyone using only the internet. I personally, use WhatsApp for chatting and staying in contact with close friends and family. The new update where you can call too is an advantage to the success of the app, but, I, to be quite honest wouldn't use the app to call as the quality isn't great, they should really try to improve that. Don't get me wrong though I really do love the app.

Primary Research Methods

Interviewing the public

We decided to interview the public as this would not only help us for Vox Pops on our local radio news bulletin but would also help us understand our target audience. Therefore we decided to have to separate occasions to interview the public. The first is to understand our specific target audience and the second would be to ask the public's thoughts on a certain story.

We decided to ask these questions 5 questions:

1. What types of media do you use?
2. What types of radio stations do you listen to?
3. How often do you listen to news?
4. What do you expect to hear in a news bulletin?
5. Would you listen to a news bulletin that challenges the existing codes and conventions?

We decided to interview 6 people, 3 males and 3 females. We wanted to find different demographics as this would help gain the best understanding of what target audience we're making our local radio news bulletin for and give us a fair representation of what the people in the local area have.

Surveys given to the public

We felt that this would also be a great way to understand our audience as it wouldn't force our audience to be recorded and therefore just remain anonymous. The problem with having an anonymous survey would be that the people taking part may be conscious or feel uncomfortable giving their honest opinions on a certain topic.

Secondary Research Methods

Using a Search Engine

When constructing my research, I found that the internet was a useful tool for my research because it's an open system that allows me to search for whatever result I want. To actually use this open system, I needed to use a search engine, so I used Google's search engine which gave me 561,000,000 results in 0.48 seconds after searching 'local radio news.' I used Google as it is the most popular search engine with 1,600,000,000 estimated monthly visitors.

Learning from a MOOC

A course of study made available over the Internet without charge to a very large number of people
"anyone who decides to take MOOC simply logs on to the website and signs up"

To improve my understanding of journalism, I decided to enrol in a MOOC called Journalism on Future Learn. I wanted to improve my understanding of journalism as the MOOC would help me develop skills and understanding what makes a good news story and what news values are.

What makes a good news story?

When writing a good news story, you need to consider multiple factors. For example, you need to be able to identify the most important part of the story, which must be up to date. This is because if you can't identify the most important part of the story, you can't expect your audience to understand what you're writing about. It's also important to have your news up to date as your audience won't care about a 2 month old story.
It's also important to remember that news is factual, not opinionated. You shouldn't be trying to convince your viewers that about your opinion on a story but rather just explain the story for the audience to create their own opinion. However, using the opinions of the public (vox-pops) is also important when writing a good news story because you're able to find what your audience thinks of a story before writing it.
Good news stories must also include the 5W's (What happened, Who is involved, Where did it take place, When did it take place, Why did it happen) as the 5W's help the audience as they're given all the necessary information to understand the story.

Another part of what makes a good news story is how you structure your essay. One way of doing this is the Inverted Pyramid. Reporters use this template when structuring their stories. It's a way of giving basic information through the first couple of sentences.
The angle/view of the story shouldn't be biased towards one side as this makes the news story unreliable and untrustworthy to the audience.

Types of News and News Values

News which is interesting and newsworthy, is distinguished by a broadly agreed set of characteristics called news 'values'.

Hard News:

Hard News is news that usually covers politics, economics, business, conflict, crime, courts, accidents etc. These news stories are factual and aim to inform the reader/audience. Examples of hard news are breaking/live news coverage. Hard news are more up to date with current affairs.

Soft News:

Soft News is news that covers human interests: Arts, entertainment, health, education etc. These stories are typically long and are often written as feature stories. These soft news stories are less timely and aim to inform the audience.

News Values:

Proximity: Concentrates on news that is of local interest; the closer to home the better. Proximity is "news that is news to you", and that the specific news event happens relatively close to you. However, the more distant the more irrelevant it is towards them.

Usefulness: anything that comes under the category of usefulness should be able to help the audience answer questions and solve problems in their daily lives.

Emotion: anything that comes under the category of emotion must take into account human interests that touch our emotions.

Timelessness: is to emphasise what is new. Is anything that is "newsworthy", or something that happened recently via the event. It is not considered timeliness if the event that a news article published was 1 month ago. It will not be considered timeliness, as it happened weeks earlier and would have already been covered by various news outlets.

Celebrities/Elites: News will only be classed as Celebrities/Elites if it contains celebrities or people who are considered to be an Elite. News that contains celebrities will impact millions of people in a sense. News classed as celebrities or elites does also come down to human interest. News stories that are under the category of Celebrities/Elites tend to always catch everyone's attention. For example, American celebrities will be on international news, yet it wont be affecting everyone or catching everyone's attention.

Unusualness: Unusualness is an event that is unusual/unexpected that doesn't usually happen. An example of this is "a man bites a dog", which is quite bizarre, whereas if it were "a dog bites a man", it'll make more sense. This news is unusual as it is not a typical news story, and it's not everyday news, therefore, this makes the news story fit in the category of 'unusualness.'

Usefulness: anything that comes under the category of usefulness should be able to help the audience answer questions and solve problems in their daily lives.

Bad News: Bad News is news that is covering bad over tones, which doesn't cover any goods news, its mostly over bad connotations. For example, conflict that is happening, such as conflict happening in Syria, which will be classified as bad news due to the loss of lives. It will be considered more newsworthy for news if the bad news involves people. Again with Syria, if there are civilian casualties, it will be more newsworthy to report.

Impact: The facts and events that have the greatest effect on the audience are the most newsworthy. Impact is typically how many people are affected by the specific type of news or event. It will be more newsworthy if the news story impacted several hundreds of people over one news story. For example, in London if there was a "Tube strike" this will impact thousands of people as that its a typical form of transport in London. So if there were to be a strike it will impact thousands of people.

Prominence: means the more prominent individuals are given more attention.

Entertainment: News that will be classed as "entertainment" will be news that attracts human interest. Humour can be part of entertainment, for example, certain types of news stories can amuse people due to the specific audience. For example, on a simplistic level, animals will amuse humans. However, news that comes under the category of entertainment doesn't typically impact anyone it is optional to either read or watch.

Local

Relating to a particular region or part

I found that after researching what local means from the dictionary, I'd need to be able to relate this to myself and local radio. Therefore I find that my locality would be an area that I'm familiar with. For example, I always commute from Kilburn to other places around me, like Maida Vale, Chippenham and Queens Park, which allows me to familiarise myself with my area. I find that local means places I'm familiar with, therefore if I went to an area like Mayfair, I wouldn't be familiar with the area and would be able to say it's my local area due the distance between Kilburn to Mayfair. Therefore locality depends on proximity since I'm more interested about news from Kilburn than Manchester as Manchester is extremely far from Kilburn, an area that I'm familiar with.

The difference between local and national/international.

Local news is different from national and international news as local news focuses on news from the area or an area near it as the audience of local news are from the local area near the radio station. However, national news differs from local as it focuses on news from all over the country rather than just one specific area, like local news. National news' audience is larger than local news as the news is written for an entire country to read/listen, whereas local news is made for a niche audience compared to national or international. International news is also different from local as it focuses on news from around the world that could affect or that relates to their audience. International news' target audience is extremely wide as it focuses on news from all over the world.

Understanding Genre:

Genre Features of Code and Conventions of a Local Radio News Broadcast:

To understand genre, I needed to analyse local radio news bulletins because I have no knowledge of what constitute a code and convention of a local radio news bulletin. Therefore I decided to research and analyse two radio broadcasts. One being a local radio news broadcast, so I used BBC Radio as a source with a list of radio stations. The second radio station was a commercial local radio news station. I found that researching one local radio news bulletin would help me understand a few codes and conventions of local radio news. However, researching would help much more as each radio broadcast may have their own unique style of presenting the news or structure of the broadcast. Therefore having two local radio news bulletins to analyse would help me not find any anomalies when it comes to codes and conventions of local radio news.

BBC Local Radio:

The Radio Broadcast that I decided to analyse to find its code and conventions of the broadcast was in Devon News Center. Devon is a county located in southwest England.

Location of Devon

Once my Local Radio News broadcast was recorded on Audacity, i began selecting the codes and conventions of a Local News Broadcast that i then exported and uploaded onto my Soundcloud.

UNDERSTANDING LOCAL

These are the codes and conventions of a local news radio broadcast

Genre of local radio news is that it is identifiable by a set of codes and conventions.

An archive in a radio broadcast is a secondary recording that is external from the radio show.

News identification is made by a continuity announce. This is essential in an news radio broadcast, because who ever is giving the news has to give their name as they're responsible for the information they're giving out. People are accountable of that information.

A jingle is a short song or tune used to draw the audiences attention in advertising and for other commercial uses.

A outro jingle is a short song or tune that indicates the end of the news broadcast.

Top news is similar as breaking news, which is news that is happening and being reported or revealed at this moment.

Commercial Local Radio:

The Commercial Radio Broadcast that I decided to analyse to find its codes and conventions was Capital FM which is located in Leicester Square, London. London is the capital city of England.

Once my Commercial recording was recorded on Audacity, i then cut up the codes and conventions of the Commercial Radio Broadcast, and uploaded it onto my blog.

An interview or a guest gives the broadcast the opportunity to have an expert in the topic and increases the broadcast's validity. It also increases the broadcast's reliability as journalists actually attempt to research the story through other sources of information. It gives a different view of a news story.

Weather forecasts are important because the audience benefit from knowing how to adjust for the weather when they go out.

A jingle is important in a local radio news bulletin as it can be used as a notification or alert for the audience to understand when the presenter will start speaking or when there's a new story to report.

It's good to have an outro jingle as it's a signal for the end of a news segment or the news broadcast.

Content Analysis

Understanding Audiences

One of the most important aspects to consider when creating your local radio news bulletin is the audience and understanding the audience. Therefore we needed to think about who is our target audience and what to create for them. To start my research, I decided to identify and research demographics as understanding my audience would allow to know what sort of content I can include in my production and what type of audience I'm appealing to: niche (select group of people with a specialised taste) or mass (large amount of people with a basic taste). Researching demographics gave me a better understanding of the concept of audience.

Audience Demographics:

Age
Gender
Ethnicity
Social Class
Region
Disabilities
religious/cultural background

Niche and Mass Audience

Niche audiences - specific

The niche audience is the a subset of the market, the niche marketed focuses specifically on what the audience wants. An example of a niche market would be a British comedy movie, the reason why this is seen as a niche market because it satisfies unique interests

Mass Audience - general

The mass audience is a much larger audience group that share the same interest as each other, for example an audience that likes action films would be a mass audience to appeal to as it is hugely diverse.

Audience linking to radio

Niche audiences relate to radio because a radio station such as, local devon, would have a specific genre or topic to a small minority of people, whereas capital fm appeals to a mass audience as it is more general and has a widespread audience.

Hypodermic Needle Theory

The hypodermic needle theory comes from the theorist Frankfurt School, the theory is about audiences effects after watching on or consuming media. For example, if audience listen to a commercial or a local radio new bulletin, theres a chance they can be impacted depending on how they decode it.
There are two types of audience when it comes to the hypodermic needle theory. Passive, which is when the audience willingly without question accepts the message. For example, the boy who killed his grandmother after playing Grand Theft Auto, a game where you can shoot people to death, steal cars and have sex with prostitutes. After the boy played the game, he felt that it was acceptable to kill his grandmother because he could kill people in the game.

BOBO DOLL

The Bobo Doll experience is an example of the hypodermic needle theory. This is where children watch an adult beat up this doll and are later each individually put in a room with the doll. The children must come to a decision to either beat up the doll or leave the doll alone. These are clear examples of active and passive audiences.

The Cultivation Theory

Cultivation theory examines the long-term effects of television. It says that the "more time people spend 'living' in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality portrayed on television."

An example of the cultivation theory taking place is the man who believed that it was okay to stab his taxi driver to death after playing Grand Theft Auto, a violent video game that allows you shoot people with guns, amputate limbs and blow up cars.

GTA player who is passively affected by the game, shows evidence of the cultivation theory.

Dominant Ideology

An ideology in media is a set of values, attitudes and beliefs which an individual, group or society holds to be true or important. They are then shared by a culture or society about how that society should function. The reason why a dominant ideology is a strong belief is because attitudes, morals and values are shared by people in a society, which then frames the way they think when they consider what is right from wrong. It is a mechanism of social control as people who have morals and beliefs can live together without too many complications. For example in London the society believe that we have the right to voice our own opinions, which is called 'freedom of speech'. This helps when it comes to how our society functions as people will be able to voice their opinions and it is a strong belief that everyone is entitled to this without discrimination which can be different when it comes to other societies as they may not be entitled to a freedom of speech because of situations that contradict their values such as dictatorship.

Stuart Hall (Cultural Theorist)

The Encoding and decoding model of communication was first developed by cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall in 1973. Stuart Hall offers a theoretical approach of how media messages are produced, disseminated, and interpreted. He claims that TV and other media audiences are presented with messages that are decoded, or interpreted in different ways depending on an individual's cultural background, economic standing, and personal experiences.

The encoding of a message is the production of the message. It is a system of coded meanings, and in order to create that, the sender needs to understand how the world is comprehensible to the members of the audience.

Decoders interpret messages differently. When you decode a message, you're extracting the meaning of that message into terms that you're able to easily understand. Decoding is the process of obtaining, absorbing and understanding

The Oppositional - This is when the audience are in complete disagreement with the product's message or setting. Within Stuart Hall's encoding and decoding model, the interpretation of a mass-media text by a decoder whose social situation places them in a directly oppositional relation to the dominant code, who understands the preferred reading but does not share the text's code and rejects this reading, bringing to bear an alternative ideological code. This is what is called ‘reading against the grain’ or a subversive reading. Compare hegemonic reading; negotiated reading.

The Negotiated - This is when a member of the audience partly agrees with part of the product e.g. Film, documentary, TV programme.

The Dominant - they're the most common and widely-accepted interpretations of a given text.

Active and Passive audience

An Active audience is an audience that does not only receive information passively but is actively involved, in making sense of the message within their personal and social contexts.

A passive audience is an audience that merely observes an event rather than actively responding to it.

Primary Research Methods
Audience Research Interview With Public

I went out on the streets of Maida Vale with a portable microphone - the Tascam DR-05 to interview my target audience.I spoke to many people to ask whether they listen to local radio news bulletins, many people did not want to be recorded,however i was able to get an understanding from one person who i recorded a male aged 26,and this is what he said.

The response was very good, as it gave me an understanding on what to include in my news bulletins as well as what my target audience really value in their news bulletins they listen to every morning.

These are the questions we asked:

-How often do you listen to local news bulletins?

-Why do you like listening to local news bulletins?

-We are planning to create a local news bulletin for the area of Maida Vale, what kinds of thing would you like to hear from that news?

Blog Walkthrough

Using Rajar

When trying to understand an audience, it's a good idea to analyse data from other local radio news stations. Therefore the best place to find and analyse data of audiences is to use Rajar (Radio Joint Audience Research). Rajar is a company that measuring radio audiences in the UK.

Production

Production members:
Oliver Norris (6107) - Host
Ryan Mcveigh (6095) - Sports correspondent
Reece J Lyons (6088) - Editor
Hewi Ali (6004) - Researcher

When deciding the roles of the group, we came to the conclusion that when producing a local radio news bulletin, the host must always stay the same as it would break one of the codes and conventions of local radio news. Therefore we decided that Oliver would be the host for each news story. However, we felt that we should change the roles between Ryan, Reece and myself as it would give all of us the chance to edit, research and be a part of the radio. However, we made sure that if we were introducing a new role, such as the sport correspondent, the person would keep that role if the sports correspondent returned in a different news story.

My group and I are choosing news stories revolving around are chosen area of locality, Maida Vale. Since QPR is the closest Football Club to our area and just had some big news of a new manager we felt that this was the ideal topic to do.

Role	Script	Running Time/SFX
Ryan - host	Sports now with myself and Oliver Norris. Over to you Oliver!	5 seconds
Oliver – Sports correspondent	After leaving the club’s managerial role over a decade ago, Ian Holloway has returned to Loftus Road as manager of QPR	7 seconds
Ryan	Due to Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s poor losing streak as manager of the club, the owners have made a decision to release him and bring in Holloway	9 Seconds
Oliver	With QPR being 17 in the table, locals are happy with the return of Ian Holloway hoping to improve their wins in matches climbing their way up the table.	9 seconds

Editing

Screenshots of editing

The image above is a screenshot of the editing we partook in while recording our news story. It accounted for 28seconds although this was a bit short of what we predicted. The only real editing we had done was aligning the 4 recording to make them consecutively play, we also had to shorten some recording twice.

Evidence Of Editing

Prior to editing screenshot

After editing

Above are 2 images of proof of editing, an the effect done on these audio pieces were the amplify tool, if you look see how the audios were looking before amplify and before repositioning.

NEWS TOPICS

This news story lasts a total of 37 seconds which is quite long but in this case we will leave it how it is. The only proper editing that we partook was lining the selected audio up and cutting out unnecessary or unnecessary audio.

Now, I set out alongside with my group to find news stories (shown previously too):