Introduction to Radio Journalism

Week 1

Radio is everywhere!
1. It is portable. It is a hands free and an eye free medium.
2. It is the most common medium.
3. It is immediate, so less crew needed.
4. It is intimate and so bypasses the sense of being 'one of an audience'. TV fails to do this.
5. It is personal. The addresser refers to the listener in the first person i.e. I, you, your.
6. It is informal, informative and reliable.

Unlike TV, radio does not demand the individual's whole attention.
In comparison to TV, people are often alone when listening to the radio. To emphasise the importance of the radio, elderly people may even consider radio presenters to be friends.
Presenters speak to us as individuals.
91% of the British population, aged 15 and above, listen to the radio everyday. Often, when people watch the TV, they feel there is nothing to watch for them.
The average person listens to the radio for over an hour a day.
The radio is often the first place to go to hear the news and is the first sound we hear in the morning.
Radio stations have broad categories and these categories differ depending upon their identity and the audience they attract;

Commercial v Public Service Broadcasting (PSB)Commercial stations rely on money from advertisements during air time. This therefore affects the content of the radio show.
PSB i.e. the BBC, however, rely on a licence fee to operate.
Commercial channels have to ensure they are impartial and have no political bias. However, often the underlying views of channels are known - for example Fox news and CRN in America are communists and so are right wing supporters. They supported the Bush administration and achieved and retained support from multi - national companies.
PSB stations, however, have no support from fundraising or government subsidies and so cutbacks have to be made.

There are three different types of radio stations, in terms of the number of listeners they attract;

1. National i.e. BBC, Talksport.
2. Regional i.e. Scot FM (Central Scotland)
3. Local - The Eagle, BBC Southern Counties Radio.

OFCOM is the regulator of the media and communications industry.

Radio stations can be categorised by the type of material they broadcast;

1. Music - based programming i.e. BBC radio 1, Kiss FM.
2. Speech - based programming i.e. Talksport

There have been a few changes in recent years to the way radio is listened to;

1. Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB). It is vibrant and a fast - moving area, that is rapidly expanding. It offers an increasing number of national, local and niche - audience stations. It is a very attractive
medium for newcomers and brings with it lots of opportunities. The skills are transferable, as what you learn in radio you can transfer over to TV.
If a person if too offensive, then this may become too much for sponsors and so may lose viewers. This was the case with Mr Howard Stern.

2. Internet Radio i.e. Totalrock.com, Bloomberg.com. Amongst these opportunities are numerous news stations using the internet to reach their audience.

3.Podcast - This is an audio file of either an MP3 or AAC. It is available to download on the Internet. The programmes are of convenience i.e. BBC Iplayer, BBC Radio 4. It has direct audio and audio versions of other material such as the Guardian film weekly and football weekly. There may be amateur audio, which is created by individuals on home equipment.

There is much more choice these days, making us as consumers more picky.