1 - AS Evaluation - Using Conventions Of Real Media Products

To find out what the conventions of radio were, I did a great deal of research and planning, so that I could authentically recreate these conventions in my radio production. I listened to other stations similar to mine, such as 'Talk Sport' and 'LBC'. Noting every element that was relevant to the running order, and the overall theme of my show. 

After the completion of my preliminary task, the first thing I did was listen to a range of stations, also visiting their websites to analyse the colour schemes, layout and adverts used - to see if these elements indicated conventions of the show (in terms of schedules, content, news stories and adverts) and whether they gave an indication of audience.

My idea was to do a contemporary sports station, similar 'talkSPORT' in terms of the fact it would be dominated by sports content and similar to 'LBC' as it targeted a local audience and it focused mostly on discussion and speech rather than music, with listeners encouraged to phone in and debate the sporting issues of the day.



The types of news stories were similar to those I heard on 'talkSPORT' and 'LBC', apart from on my bulletins, there would be more sports-related content, with each story having a link to the local region of London (if you listen to the clips below you can see how each of the sories has a link to London, for example the first story takes place in Islington, both football stories mention matches at Wembley and the celebrity affair story took place during the London Olympics). 





I was surprised to find so many similarities in terms of conventions, particularly in the news and sport in terms of how it was presented to the audience, and the jingles for the news bulletins. Each jingle - for most stations, included the name of the station, the frequency and the slogan. 

On 'Kiss', they have different jingles depending on the show. 'The Breakfast Show' jingle, for example was longer, and included the names of the presenters on the show. It also had modern beats and sound FX over the top. On 'LBC', their Breakfast jingle was plain and simple - compared to Kiss. It had no music over the top and only included the name of the station and the presenters.

Each news bulletin that I listened to contained three to four stories, which featured (across the bulletin, but not necessarily in each story) outside broadcasts, soundbites and voxpops.

Each news bulletin I listened to began with short, rock type beats sounding like the type of music you would relate football to. My jingles throughout my station would have similar music with different voiceovers depending on what is about to happen. I tried to include all of these elements in my bulletin, and included a news jingle, a convention I heard on each of the stations that I listened to.



Below are audio clips of my separate news stories, my news presenter's voice (showing the serious tone) and my completed news jingle. I hope that you can hear the ways they build upon existing conventions of radio news bulletins in terms of the various elements of the jingle (music, reference to station name, slogan, and reference to the newsreader's name).

 

The final research and planning I did into real radio shows related to genre. My preliminary task was from the sport genre, a different type of radio to music stations such as 'Capital' or 'Kiss', and I wanted my main task to be an extract from a Breakfast Show from a sports genre station.

This research informed the first drafts of my script, particularly the adverts, and focused my dialogue research and selection. I feel that the show I have produced is comparable to existing radio stations from the sports genre, such as 'talkSPORT'.