Final Task Evaluation
Radio Dave: Stories at 6
• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I wanted to make the News Program that we created as good as it could be and as close to a real news bulletin broadcast as I could get it. I listen to the news on a regular basis over the radio, mainly BBC News on Radio 4, so I got a few ideas from the news programs they broadcast to put into my own production. Going along with the idea of keeping it as real as possible, we decided that we were going to construct the show as if it was being broadcast live. So I went in the studio and presented the radio program, having CDs with all of the links, jingles and additional parts to stories. The one main difference between our broadcast production and that of a real radio station was that all items on the program were fictitious, but they all were believable items incorporating news values like disaster, politics and public interest. Whilst planning the production it also made me think quite a lot about story priority, what stories are more relevant and what people would want to here more about. One of the situations I considered carefully was with the Birmingham New Street incident and the incident at a conference in Brussels. Now this took a lot of thinking about because, the Brussels incident is an International incident that could have had an effect on the UK, where as the Birmingham incident was a major train disaster that also had a impact on certain people in the UK. As Radio Dave is a Hereford based radio station it is fairly close to New Street and this then could have a direct effect on certain commuters. We decided that this story then should take priority over the Brussels incident because it had more of a direct effect on the audience. To make it as if it was a real radio station we had to have a jingle. This was created using a program called Reason by Propellerhead incorporating the use of MIDI to create a jingle that could be used and recognized.
• How does your media product represent particular social groups?
There are many ways in which different groups of people have been represented. With the use of Vox-Pops, you have a range of social class and also age, with the younger generation depicted by a female voice that is saying that people that are older might think it is a bad idea, and the professional at the end using more complicated language “fundamentally I don’t agree with it”. These can be very useful things to have within a piece, they give the views of different people within a community, which are the people that with be directly affected, in this instance it was a 24 hour bar opening in Hereford city centre. Another way different groups are shown becomes apparent with Ludmilla Ivanova commenting on the events that took place in Brussels, her cold tone of voice indicates that Russia is not happy with Sarkozi’s behavior when speaking at a press conference. The voice over translation then had to be shown to be a neutral party, not giving much emotion at all so as not to cloud the way that Ivanova was putting her point across.
Another instance of social groups is our Foreign Correspondent, Reginald Blogger, with his middle class accent and attitude he perfectly depicts the way in which some middle class think they are very important and possibly slightly above everyone else.
The presenter, Dave, is clearly the average news reader, speaking legibly and clearly as to make his audience able to understand every word that is said, even though he is talking slightly quickly. He also bring in the typical news reader style, with the authoritative style of talking asking valid questions to the two Correspondents to get more information on the story at hand.
• What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The media product will be distributed by a Hereford commercial radio station. The stories that we had on the program were mainly to do with local news to Hereford so that wouldn’t be of much interest to anyone outside of Hereford. The station would be distributed over FM radio, DAB and internet radio as to reach the widest possible audience over a variety of platforms. If they were to broadcast online then the station would need a website with pictures of Presenters and Correspondents, possibly a webcam in the Studio and links to the radio stream and possibly a message board or forum to give the audience a place to write feedback. This would be essential to establish the brand of Radio Dave to prospective audiences of young males between the ages of 18 and 35.
• Who would be the audience for your media product?
When planning the project we had to initially think about our prospective audience. We aimed the program at people that will be traveling home from work listening to their local radio station between the ages of 18 and 35. We had to be informative but we still had to be fairly easy going, we got the idea of the whole station from the TV channel ‘Dave’ which primarily shows comedy shows, we had the idea that generally speaking the station would have a comedy/entertainment side to it and an informal vibe.
• How did you attract/address your audience?
Initially we had the jingle, which was a small piece of music written and sequenced in Propellerhead’s Reason. This was the initial thing to get the audiences attention. Then in typical news style we dipped the jingle and the main headlines were spoken over the top of the jingle. The way the headlines were put across was in a forceful manor, giving a sense of importance and authority across to the audience
• What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I had already had experience with recording, mixing desks, audio editing and sequencers from my Music Technology course that I am studying alongside AS Media. So a lot of the editing I found fairly easy as I had already done it in depth. I then took the skills I already had and implemented them in this project. We set up and recorded the program live then took the recordings we had then edited them in Sony Soundforge, an audio editing software that I have had extensive use of within other projects for Music Technology. So I had the ability to edit the audio recordings to a good and professional standard, keeping a good balance of level throughout the piece.
• Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I have learnt a lot from this project about radio news production, from scripting, priority, presenting and audio editing for radio. The skills I already had helped a lot within the project to make it as good as I could and also as realistic as possible. I had never really done any presenting before starting the course, and before the preliminary task I hadn’t done any either. It was only until that point that I decided that I would get involved with RNC Radio having a weekly slot on a music program. This then helped with confidence. This was a bonus for this task as it gave me the opportunity to have experience behind a microphone, broadcasting to a live audience. So when it wasn’t live I felt even more comfortable than I had done, this was definitely apparent in the was I was talking throughout the program.
Audience Response:
I broadcast the piece over RNC Radio , so all students and staff had access to the piece by listening to my show 'Brunch with Dave' as a news bulletin half way through the show. I had a few students come up to me through the day and said how good the bulletin was and how real they thought it was, and thought the broadcast was real news.
