5 - Attracting An Audience

To attract my target audience, every decision made had to be spot on - Jingles, adverts, news, voices had to be chosen with audience in mind to make my radio sound as authentic as possible.

Regarding the news, I listened to various news bulletins from similar genres to my own. I found the appropriate voice, music and tone for my audience before encouraging my actors to deliver their lines in that way. I found that the music was quite hushed once the news started and that the speaker was well spoken.   

Even for the choices of story, there were many stories I could have chosen, but after looking at several of the BBC's online stories and using some imagination, I came up with a few sport and crime related news, which I thought would appeal to or attract my audience. I knew that the audience would expect to hear voxpops and soundbites accompanying the stories, so I made sure to include these in mine. 





Sometimes I had to re-record a few parts as the voices didn't sound just right and I didn't think they would be the right representations for my audience. For example, some of my news correspondents had to be changed due to the voice not quite fitting the part compared to others. This happened on many occasions but it was key that they would sound convincing to my target audience.

The jingles used took time to consider, and there were many ways of recording and adding effects onto the various jingles. In other stations such as LBC and Talk Sport I noticed they have separate jingles for the show, news, and travel. I had a closer listen to Talk Sport's station jingle to hear the type of music they used. I found this to be a kind of old rock with lots of guitar, compared to the news jingle which was a shorter, calmer version of that - I knew that my target audience would have certain expectations regarding jingles, so I created what I thought they would most expect to hear (with the voiceover bellowing the station name and frequency over the top).







For my adverts, yet again I had to think of who could play the appropriate part, so that the adverts would directly appeal to my chosen audience. I used the correct voice in my 'Vinnie's Vans' advert, using a male stereotype that I thought my audience would recognise and appreciate by having two cockney characters talking about cars and building. This type of advert will directly relate to my target audience, as stereotypically men are usually associated with manual labour and cars. I also thought the advert would add the type of humour my audience would expect (the sort of humour I noticed on talkSPORT), but that it would also be a relevant advert for my target audience in terms of the type of product it is promoting.