Connor Davidson

RADIO SHOW REVIEW

Idea:We came up with the idea of this genre after listening to BBC Radio 1 for an hour. This made me realise I liked this genre of music and I felt comfortable presenting it. Our target audience was mostly teenagers to young adults (16-23), but anybody who enjoyed this music would also enjoy our show. We recognised this genre was probably more popular with people our age however we were sure there would be people not within this age range who would still listen to the show. All of our artists and songs we played were already on the college database, so we didn’t have to bring in our own music. This showed they were quite popular songs as other people had already used them; therefore we knew our audience would be large. Our songs were both old and new so there were a wide variety of songs, which also helped make our audience larger. Examples of these are ‘Go All Night’ by Gorgon City (2003) and then ‘Latch’ by Disclosure which was released in 2013. We felt all the songs we chose would reach the needs of our target audience.

Purpose:The main purpose of my radio show was to entertain the audience throughout with both music and speech. We balanced the music to speech ratio at around 3:1, which we feel was suitable for our type of radio show. As our radio show was a house/pop radio show, we included multiple activities that you would expect to hear on this type of radio show. For example we hosted a competition where you could be in with the chance to disclosure live and meet them. We also asked listeners what their favourite songs were, which they could text or tweet in and we would play them. This made sure we interacted with the audience throughout the show. We felt this created a realistic radio show, and would help maintain the energy and keep listeners entertained. We also included an advert break and a news segment which helped split the radio show up, so we could get a drink and focus on what was coming next. This was also to make sure listeners didn’t get bored of me and my partner talking too much or playing songs for too long.

Equipment/Soundboards:My partner and I were allocated practice spots inside the recording studio. This gave us time to create our playlist and practice using the mixing desk/soundboard, learning what each of the sliders did. First we had to become familiar with what to press and what not to press on the mixing desk, as ultimately pressing the wrong button could have ruined our radio show. We learned which sliders would play the next song, the song after that, different jingles and also which slider would control our microphone levels. When using the sliders we had to make sure we were gentle and only moved them gradually as we didn’t want any sudden stops in our show. We had to fade songs in and out, especially when there was 1 straight after the other. Once we had got our head around that, we had to start creating our playlist. This was simple after learning where to find the songs we needed and also the jingles which were played between songs. We also had to insert live mic slots of us talk in, this way our voices would be recorded in-between songs, so we could introduce our tracks. We had

Connor Davidson

to place our jingles in the carts which were at the side of the monitor; this enabled us to play them at suitable times throughout the show. For example, our advert break started with a jingle (which was placed in our carts), then followed by 3 adverts back to back, then ended with another jingle, followed by straight into a song. This helped the show look professional as we realised, by listening to BBC Radio 1, that this is what they do on their shows. We had to make sure we were concentrating though, because our adverts were only around 30 seconds long, so we had to be ready to switch the next advert on. If we hadn’t have done this in time, there would have been an awkward pause in between. After the show had been fully recorded, we used Reaper editing software to cut down our shows and get rid of any mistakes that were there. We could also manipulate the pitch and volume of our show, and make it different for songs or speech. This took a couple of hours to fully edit, making the show sound more professional, with fade in and outs of song and adverts. We also added background music for the speech, so it didn’t sound as boring. I picked this background music by looking for lively, upbeat tempo, which would match the genre of our show. Some of the background music was jingles; however we did also have a part of a real song in there too.

The ShowOverall, the show was successful and didn’t take much editing afterwards. There were a couple of mistakes which we edited out, to make the show sound as professional as possible.

We were pleased with the length of the show, as we feel it was a suitable amount of time for listeners to be listening. We managed to play all of our songs and also have time for speech without feeling rushed. We fitted a news slot and a competition as well as a short advert break within the show. We were also pleased with our use of the soundboard. We managed to fade our songs in and out smoothly and could play more than 1 song after another without there being an awkward pause.

Although we were pleased with a lot of our show, we also felt we could have done some things better. For example, seen as our show was aimed towards teenagers and young adults, we could have been a bit livelier on air and included more banter. Our audience may have got bored if the show was any longer, because we didn’t have much banter between me and my partner. We also could have adjusted the microphone levels after our show was recorded. This was because one of us used the main microphone and the other used the second microphone. The sound from each of them was different so when we listened back to our show, one presenter was louder than the other. These were the 2 things I think we could have improved, which we know to improve next time.

After we had edited our show down, there was no ‘dead air’, however before there was the odd time where we made a slight mistake, and had to re say the line. This didn’t happen often and after it was edited, the show sounded professional and you couldn’t tell that previously there were mistakes.

Connor Davidson

We think we did reach our intended target audience as the results from our survey that I sent out prove the music was appropriate for the show. This means the music we played was correct for our type of show and target audience. This is qualitative data as the people who filled in our survey answered in word format of yes or no rather than rating with numbers.

Here we also found through quantitative data that the main listeners of our show were within our intended target audience. 10/11 of the listeners were young adults/teenagers with 1 person outside that category. Considering all the listeners found our music appropriate we think we defintelty reached our target audience correctly.

Finally our last piece of data we found was the rating of our show, rated by the 11 people I sent the survey too. This data is quantitive data as the respondents answered in

Connor Davidson

number format rather then worded. I received a range of results on the overall rating of the show, from 4-10. The most common rating was 7, which I feel is fair, as there were places we could definitely improve.

SummaryOverall, I was pleased with my show but I know there could definitely be improvements if we made another one. These changes would make the show sound more professional and easier to listen too. For example, being more entertaining and lively during the spoken part of the show. This would be beneficial as it would attract a bigger audience and keep them listening as they wouldn’t get bored of the show. I would also adjust the microphones and sit at the same distance away each time I spoke; otherwise the volume of my speech would be different each time. This isn’t a major issue as I can edit this afterwards, but it doesn’t sound as good or professional as it would if the microphones were equal. Another solution to this would be just to use the same microphone as then the levels will be the same. I could also add a bigger range of songs from over the years. This could extend our audience as research shows the majority of the listeners were all young. If we added older songs that were within our genre, we could attract the older generation as well as the young generation which would help build a bigger audience for the show. These added improvements would help make our show more professional and more entertaining for the audience.