Final

Commentary for Final Broadcast

Here is a commentary on our final broadcast, explaining and analysing the project.

Final News Bulletin

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

CLIP 1 EDGE FM INTRO
With our radio broadcast we aimed to shape our idea’s around upbeat, lively and chatty Radio 1 shows such as the Chris Moyles show and The Chart Show with Reggie Yates. Therefore, this was our main inspiration when approaching many aspects of our broadcast. Here in the introductory jingle I believe we have used general conventions of usual radio stations that are in-keeping with the Radio 1 style. The jingle is cheerful and animated,setting the tone and foreshadowing the style of the broadcast to come. This introduces the audience not only to the name of the show and the hosts, but the general theme also.

CLIP 2 VOXPOPS DIVERSITY
Here we have used and developed the usual conventions of real media like Radio 1 broadcasts, in using a diverse range of people to voice our Voxpops. Here you can clearly hear a mixed variety of people with different dialects which appeals to the target audience of our broadcast as we aim to reach listeners aged 15-29 from all different backgrounds and classes.

CLIP 3 FOOTBALL CLIPS
In this clip we have used our sports reporter, Megan’s voice to narrate the news stories of the week. Originally we believed the sport needed more of a chatty, upbeat style much like that of our chosen motivation of Radio 1. Therefore, we decided to include a clip from the actual football match mentioned to try and recreate the elated and exhilarating feel from the goal. We believe that this does use conventions of real media products as speech from players or commentary from a game is often heard on radio sport broadcasts.

CLIP 4 GRAND NATIONAL GIRLS
In this clip, the easy-going, laid back, chatty style that our broadcast tried to portray is captured perfectly. We speak to race-goers for our Grand National feature with a lively tone and they respond giggling and cheerful. I think therefore we have developed the light-hearted chat that is usually involved in Radio 1 broadcasts as we more directly involve the listeners and invite them to speak freely.

CLIP 5 INTRO JINGLE BURSTS

In these clips we decided to stay within the normal conventions of radio using short bursts of sound to introduce the sport, weather etc. We understand that real media products do this as it is more phonetically pleasing and so with our radio broadcast we chose to do the same. In effect, we believe it animates the news stories and keeps the audience engaged, whilst adding some fun to the listening experience. We use this technique before the news and use a low pitched, deep sounding effect to set the serious and informative tone and also before the sport were a lively, upbeat jingle is used to illustrate a change from more serious stories.

CLIP 6 THE BURQA BAN

Here we have developed normal conventions of real media products by conducting our "Burqa Ban" story outside at the location of our Voxpops. By doing this we ensured authentic background sounds and took the story beyond the constraints of the studio. This, we believe, livens the sound of the broadcast as listeners can hear a clear change. Many radio stations conduct their stories inside the studio and record outside and therefore we changed and developed this universal way of recording Voxpops.

2. How does your media product represent social groups?

Overview

First of all our group doesn’t represent a great variety of social groups, being that we are all 17 year old white Caucasian females. We are also of a working class background, and shown as being stereotypical students. However we did want our radio broadcast to represent this image on a whole, because we wanted to capture an audience of 15-29 year old's with would contain varying social groups of religion, age, stereotype, class and gender. Therefore to achieve this we decided that is was important to represent these groups through the content of the broadcast to compensate for the ‘student’ image we represented; also individually we have aimed to represent a mixed register within our speaking and subject matter. For example we have shown more formal news, ‘banning the Burqa’ for which we adopted a formal tone of voice to address the serious issue. Contrasting to this we also had ‘lighter’ news such as ‘Galloway’s 50th Anniversary’ for which we adopted an informal and more colloquial tone.

Gender

In terms of gender we have aimed to represent both groups equally. For example within our broadcast we have a 'Ladies Day' segment as our main story which could stereotypically remain with a mainly female theme. However to prevent this we have also added an interview with a male groundskeeper so that we even out the role of males and females within the story and equally share out interests and subject matter. Here this clip shows our representation of men and women within the ladies day story.

Age

Our audience is fairly young ranging from 15-29 therefore we wanted to captivate them by sticking to a new music style to attract my audience. To give a nightlife feel.

Class

In terms of class we have tried to represent everybody equally. First of all we did this by showing the international news and world issues which will appeal to all classes equally. Also we have tried to represent the local working community, e.g. cadbury's factory in order to keep the interest of the local community as it is a local broadcast. Here is a clip of the representation of working class, and local community.

Race

In terms of race we have chosen news subjects which involve different races and dialects in order to appeal to a very wide audience. For example we have chosen the subject of the banning of the burqa because it allows different views to be shown by different races about this subject. This includes for and against. This in turn shows race as evenly represented and discussed.

Stereotypes

Finally stereotypes can be seen to conform to in some cases within our broadcast, however we haven't approached it in a way to offend, but to relate to the local community through their dialect and situations they would find themselves in. For example the accent of a local 'Galloways' branch manager being a stereotypical Wigan accent. This is shown in the clip below

By Megan Armstrong

3: What media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Radio Stations are usually owned by a bigger conglomerate aside from independent radio stations. These include four major conglomerates that distribute and exhibit radio broadcasts.

The BBC own 59 radio stations nationally and regionally. These include BBC Radio 1 to 7 and a BBC Asian Network.

Ulster TV Radio who own more local radio stations such as Talksport, Central Radio, Juice FM and Wire FM.

Bauer own more rock orientated stations such as Q, Rock FM and Kerrang. (These radio stations are spread across other media institutions as well, such as 'Kerrang' music magazine and TV channel.

And The Guardian Media Group PLC own Real Radio, Smooth Radio and Rock Radio brands.

In comparison, WISH fm plays locally to Wigan and St. Helens. It isn't owned by a larger company and therefore classed as a Local, independent radio station. This means they can produce all their own content and don't have to achieve a specific sound or representation of a company.

Whilst making the project we were aware that our radio broadcasts would have to be a part of a bigger distributor, in order to afford funding and exhibition. Conglomerates such as the BBC also provide funding for local radio stations, in the northwest the BBC own BBC Manchester, Merseyside and Lancashire. This may mean broadcasts would have to be tweaked to suit the BBC's agenda.

Here are some radio viewing figures showing the benefits of having a larger conglomerate to distribute and exhibit.









From the table we can see the hours listened to each radio station in total are clearly higher in the more well known BBC distributed stations.

The 4 Main Conglomerates in Radio

1.) BBC

2.) Ulter TV Radio

and more including WISH fm..

3.)Bauer

4.) Guardian Media Group

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

For our broadcast, we had to use a hand recorder in order to record the voices we were interviewing. It is compact enabling us to carry it around with ease to interview different people.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Comparison of introduction of Final and Preliminary Projects

From the prelim to our final project our group has made many advancements. In terms of understanding our audience and many technological advances. This first clip (above) shows a comparison between the introduction of our preliminary task and our final project. First of all the main improvements are that in the prelim we where not very aware of our target audience, therefore the music used is outdated, however we rectified this issue within our final project by researching our target audiences' favourite types of music and from knowing this information we looked through the media departments copyright free resources for a suitable style and genre. Furthermore in terms of technology we have improved because we have used 'key notes' ( as seen in Q.6) within our final project to alter the sound so it may fade out as gradually as we feel necessary or crescendos, to make for a more varied and professional sound. For example we have brought the sound in gradually to a crescendo within our final project and build up the sound along with the added voices for emphasis and urgency to attract our audience. Whereas in the preliminary we did not have such knowledge of the programme 'premiere' therefore the sound was very much on one level. Also in the prelim the voice over seems quiet and over powered by the music, this may have been because we did not correctly adapt the sound levels within the recording studio so the voice was not loud enough. However we have now learned that even if the levels where not correct initially on 'premier' we can change the volume by altering the auto gain which helps balance the music and speech more accurately.

Comparison of Ending Sequence of Final and Preliminary Projects

Within these two ending sequences there is a clear difference in flow and continuity, this is because within our prelim we didn't add any music to the ending to round off the programme, this in turn leaves the broadcast disjointed and a feeling of being unfinished. Also the music in my final project gives a coherence to the audience again which links to the beginning and gives a sense of circling to some to an appropriate end. However we had difficulty in the prelim task of importing sounds that we had cut within audacity making the mistake of converting the file to an MP3 or saved it as an audacity project rather than exporting it as a wav file.

Sound Effects

Within our final project we have used a lot more sound effects, because within our prelim it was lacking in a continuous flow because there was lack in underlying music, sound effects and atmospheric sounds ( eg at the races crowd noise). This really helps to keep the broadcast upbeat and flowing and helps the reader to relate to different sections of the news bulletin. For example the sport report jingle and the trumpet sound effect for the Ladies Day segment. We edited the sound effects using premiere to keep them short and snappy and to be careful not to take up too much broadcast time, so we could still keep vital news information. We managed out time more effectively within our final project from our prelim also because we had the time line on premiere which helped us to keep all sections of our broadcast within correct time allocations. Also we felt more organised on a whole as a group.

By Megan Armstrong

The Name !

This week we have focused on coming up for a catchy, sharp and snappy name for our station. Some of our ideas follow :

• Did You Know Radio
• DYK Radio
• Up Radio
• Edge FM
• Razor Radio
• Sharp FM
• Fusion Radio
• Harlet Radio
• DayandNight Radio
• OOO Radio

After Careful Consideration, we have selected the name EDGE FM to be put forward as the radio stations name. I feel that this name will make the station appeal to or target group as it is young and fun, promoting our edgy and novel personality.

Heather Varley, Sophie Elliot and Megan Armstrong.

Almost complete!

We have put together our whole news bulletin successfully, and we have got our teacher listen to it to give us his opinion and guidance. Here is his feedback:

Greg: It's very good and well structured with appropriate vox pops and added sound effects such as the clip from the cabury's factory and from the grand national, e.g crowd noises and trotting noises. however in the sport report i feel you need to add a few sound clips of goals for example. Also the in studio interview needs more pace and excitement and possibly more questions asked.

Therefore, to improve on this we have decided to re-record the interview so it is more lively and captivating, and also we will add more questions so the interview does not seem passive and unimportant.

Megan, Heather, Becky and Sophie

sounds.

We have decided after doing some trial recordings of horse sounds myself that my own recordings don't give off the right effect, so instead our group will get our sound effects from the copyright free CD supplied by Greg .


Heather Varley

Grand National plans.

So our idea to cover the Grand national as our main story and topic for the broadcast has been accepted. This is great news as I really feel that the Grand National, held in Aintree, Merseyside is very relevant, it fits the brief well and there is a lot of light hearted conversations and interviews to be had !
So, some things inside of the grand national topic we will cover will include:

Outside Broadcasts:

• Speak to racegoers, asking them who there betting on and why, (we could have groups of ladies who are betting on the horse because they have the best name, because the horse is a mare, the jockey wears pink silks, the best looking jockey, the jockeys silks match their outfit etc, etc for humour)
• Speak to Famous racegoers for popularity
• Have snippets of the news correspondents saying things such as, " just listen to the energy and buzz here at the racecourse" and we would hear the bookies, the betters, the cheering, sound of horse shoes, laughing etc etc... This is because these noises would be interesting for the listeners to hear.
• For humour, we could "speak" to one of the horses , we would do this by holding the recording equipment by a horses nose ( this would be easy to achieve as I have horses to record sounds from)
• Have question and answers to jockeys and caretakers, managers of Aintree racecourse, about topics such as "whats a furlong" , " whats the prize", " how long has the grand national been going for" etc etc.

Studio Broadcasts

• Do an Introduction to the John Smiths Grand National, speaking briefly about the length of the race, the amount of runners and the prize at the end.
• Say to go onto our twitter site, facebook or website (edge.co.uk) to follow the live debate on the race.
• Say to Text in with who your betting on

I will take some recording equipment home and record the sounds of the following:

• Horses Walking
• Horse Winny's
• Horses Breathing into the recording equipment
• Horses Trotting, cantering, galloping

Heather Varley

Progress Update

We have finally completely finished our structure now for our news bulletin, including a jingle, news stories, sport stories, vox pops and OB, weather, a recorded interview and our main broadcast which is going to be the grand national.
Also we have recorded the opening of the show, the news stories and sport. We have also edited the beginning 2 minutes of the show successfully, including some sound effects and jingles, for example the news underlay. Through editing i am learning valuable skills of how to edit, cut and use certain effects, for example cross fading
However i still think in order to make the bulletin sound phonetically effective we need to work on having smooth linking transitions between stories and segments of the bulletin. We are going to achieve this by linking back to the studio in between stories.

By Megan Armstrong

Grand National

Some Ideas of mine we could cover on our radio broadcast include,

• John Smiths Grand National 2010
• A story about local director "James Cameron" (who isn't really local but we would say he is) who won what etc, etc...
• Winter Olympics

The Grand national would be a great event to "cover" in my opinion, there is a lot to speak about within the event such as Ladies Day, The best dressed, Who to win the grand national (this could be made into a fun aspect of the show, still attracting the younger generation to watch) . We could do outside broadcats, Vox Pops, and interviews with the jockeys on the favourites.

Here's footage from last years John Smiths Grand National, you'll be able to see the lively chat we could speak about and where the topics would come from watching the race.

Heather Varley


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxbXMOXOIzM&feature=PlayList&p=6F18759A2F740806&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=14

Update on Activity

Today we recorded our news bulletin headlines in the recording studio। We worked more on our VoxPop's and "Ban the Burqa?" headline, compiling them in Adobe Premiere and trying different news jingles for the background. We desided that the outside studio broadcast would sound more authentic without the use of a jingle, yet our other headlines, which are in the studio, will incorporate a background jingle.



Sophie Elliott

Vox Pop

In our news bulletin we include a vox pop on the subject of the 'Burqa Ban'. We have an outside broadcast and a collection of opinions on the subject from people at random. This makes the story more interesting and a break from the repetitive news bulletin structure.
Here is the first vox pop we made;

However, we had a few problems with the first take of the vox pop. Once edited we realised the outside sounds weren't loud enough and didn't sound much different to the studio. This would have to be overcome because it is an outside broadcast. We decided we will at least have to record the news story at the beginning of the vox pop again, in order to create the outside feel. This would be done in a noisier area. Another problem with the vox pops was that the voices recorded don't sound lively or interesting, which is essential in a radio station aimed at a young audience. This may have to be done again in the future.

By Becky Owens

Update on activity

Today the group recorded the VoxPops for one of our main news headlines, for our bulletin. The subject was "should Britain ban the burqa" and we questioned various students and adults aged 15-29, which is our targeted audience. Although this may not be a local news story as such, it is an issue that is applicable to any location and so fits our brief of a local news bulletin. We recorded a selection of people, trying to create a diverse range of voices as well as opinions and we approximate that we will use 3-4 of our recordings. We aim to make the "Ban the Burqa?" story 40 seconds long, which will be our longest news headline as it features the views of the Voxpops. Our two other headlines will be the Cadbury's factory takeover and the high rate of teenage pregnancy and chlamydia in Wigan, making it our main local news.

Sophie Elliott

Story Ideas

I have had a lot of ideas over the past couple of weeks for our radio station. In my opinion, our radio station should be aimed at a 16 - 25 y/o target market, and should really try and orientate around music and "showbiz" news.
An example of some music themed news we could air is news such as who has won what award, who has hit the number one etc etc.... I feel that this type of news is relevant and really grabs the listeners attention, especially if we were to aim our radio station at a 16 to 25 year old field.
We could do Vox Pops and outside broadcasts at festivals (made up as all the festivals will not of begun by the deadline), or another idea is that we could do vox pops on which festivals everyone is going to, which acts people are looking forward to watching or even ask peoples opinions on the sale prices of tickets for festivals and the selling of them on e-bay (as this is extortionate and a very popular subject to discuss!)
However, i would not only include music and artist news in our radio broadcast, i would also include news from around the world including topics such as natural world disasters (i could link Haiti into music by covering gigs and days to raise money for the people of Haiti), i would cover in my sports section the winter Olympics, and i would briefly cover the weather.
However these topics and radio areas, although are vital parts of a radio broadcast, would not be hovered on, and merely touched on, because as i would be looking at a 16 to 25 target audience, the group would quickly loose interest and therefore switch to another station.

Heather Varley