R10 - OFCOM

 

OFCOM

- Office of Communications

What is OFCOM?

 

Ofcom is the communications regulator. They regulate TV and radio sectors, fixed line telecoms, mobiles, postal services in addition to the airwaves over which wireless devices operate.

What they do

The main legal duties include ensuring:

• That the UK has a wide range of electronic communications services including high-speed services such as broadband
• a wide range of high quality TV and radio programmes are provided, appealing to different tastes and interests
• TV and radio services are provided by a range of different organisations
• people who watch TV and listen to the radio are protected from harmful or offensive material
• people are protected from being treated unfairly in TV and radio programmes and from having their privacy invaded
• a universal postal service is provided in the UK- this means six days a week
• the radio spectrum (the airwaves used by everyone from taxi firms and boat owners, to mobile-phone companies and broadcasters) is used in the most effective way



R9 - Audience Survey (Questionnaire) & Analysis

R8 - Questionnaire

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PMY62MR

My team and I came up with a range of questions to ask young people which will help us make our radio broadcast better. These questions gives us an idea about the type of audience we have and how we can appeal to their likes and interests. As our target audience are teenagers - young adults, it is important for us to convey the ideas that they like or otherwise our radio cast will not be as effective as we would like it to be.

We all listed three questions each to create a complete questionnaire which we feel like will help give us an idea on how to make a good and effective news cast.

R7 - Local Radio Newscast Analysis (East London Radio Station)

East London Radio is a non for profit radio station, that gives people the pathway into radio through training and mentoring 

The Magic Jukebox Newscast

The first thing we hear in the newscast is speech as a man says; “Welcome to East London Radio. You’ve been listening to Zanthia there and her fantastic show. I never miss it; millions of other people never miss it.” The fact that he exaggerates on the amount of listeners who listen in could suggest to the audience a lot of people do in fact listen to it, or it could be irony as he knows that their newscast is on a small radio station and therefore tries to play it as a joke.

The speech form continues as he says “My name is Johnny black but who the hell are you?” however here a dialogue occurs with a woman who says “I’m Emma Star, with a dreadful flu but I’m soldering on”. Initially when I first heard Black say "who the hell are you?", although it did seem offensive to whoever he was speaking to, it did intrigue me to see who it could've been. Also, I personally thought he was addressing us, the audience. This unconventional method did shock me however when I heard it was the dialogue between both presenters, I had a sense of relief.

So far, no news values and ethics apart from the introduction of the radio newscast and the presenters have appeared. There has also not been any sort of sound effects, stings, introductions of stories or back ground music in the news cast. This news cast honestly has not appealed to me so far with the shocking mode of address, and simply the tone of the speech is quite neutral and monotone.

Even though there is a flowing conversation between the two, it does seem to have the appearance that it is scripted as Black often has brief moments of pause whereas Emma seems to be freely speaking. He continuously says "err" within the moments of pause which does start to irritate me as I hear it more than I hear him speak.

On the other hand, with that said, the news cast does seem to get more interesting, as they introduce the news cast's purpose and theme. E.g. “This show has a theme of famous people” which did seem to interest me slightly. However I think the news cast is aimed at an older audience, as the song seemed to be something from the 1970s, which as a 16 year old, would be very unlikely for me to hear about. What I did like about this newscast though was that they gave background information about the song and interesting facts like it was produced by Michael Jeff Wayne, who had also produced for the BBC.


The language in the newscast is quite informal as Black says  "This is David Essex, that ‘cocky’ chap" when introducing the song's artist. This conforms to the stereotypes of east Londoners being fairly rough, rowdy and cocky as he uses the word 'cockney'. Even if it may not be to offend anyone, It did surprise me as to how Blacks language was portrayed in the newscast in comparison to Emma who was presented as a much more real and true presenter.

Again, there was a long silence.
But, I'm not entirely sure whether it was accidental or intentional as it did not seem to be for effect as there was no story after it. It may have been for the song to start as the effect of fade in was used at the beginning of the track.

Overall, I generally thought this was a bad newscast. It did not intrigue me and I couldn't relate to it in ways that I would've liked to. I'm from East London and as this didn't appeal to me, I doubt it will have a likely chance of the "millions" that apparently listen to it. The most conventional part of the radio newscast was the dialogue, but I didn't not pick up any sense of codes and conventions like familiarity, currency, negativity, or even human interest.
To improve they should have added something that would have appealed to the audience for example news stories, songs that the more young generation would've been likely to know from the 70s etc. They also could have added music and sound within the introduction to entice the audience instead of simple silence whilst they're talking.

R6 - Our Type of Audience

Tweenz FM

ABOUT OUR AUDIENCE:



·         14-21

·         Male/female

·         London area

        - Bengali/Somalian/White/Asian/African/Caribbean

        - Muslims/Christians/Atheist – all religious and non-religious

       - Sexual orientation – les/bi/gay

        - Disabled/abled

THEIR FORM OF ACCESS OF TWEENZ FM:

·         Mobile phones/laptops/computers/tablets/iPads

APPEARENCE & JOB STATUS:

·         Standard clothing for an average person; high street shops e.g. new look, Topshop/top man/JD/Sports Direct

·         In education/uni, work/part time jobs

·         Family people

·         Students - working class

WHO OUR STORY WILL APPEAL TO:

·         Boys into sports/girls into fashion/crime

·         Disabled people

·         People interested in gym facilities

·         People with access to the internet

·         Crime news

·         People with student finance

·         Teenagers that have nothing to do at home

DEMOGRAPHICS & PSYCHOGRAPHICS:

·         They fall into demographic E as they are mainly students in education or people with jobs and could perhaps earn a minimum wage as it may be their first job

·         The psychographic groups my target audience would fall under are:

- Mainstreamers; because they follow the conventional forms of society

- Aspirers; because they have higher goals and as they’re young, they may just be starting out in this world on their own two feet

- Succeeders; some people may already know what they want in life and are in the process of becoming that

- Explorers; people that want to be independent and want an adventure like students

- Reformers; free from restrictions and is aware of personal taste/judgement, they select things for the quality and not because it is mainstream

R5 - Planning My Research

In order to create the best radio news cast, we need to research the most important thing - What makes a good radio news cast? We need to be able to know about radio inside out which means we must know about the codes and conventions of radio news, institutions of radio news, different types of news, examples of them and about the audience. This is important because if we don't know about this, we will not be able to make our news cast to the best of our ability. Most of this can be found out using secondary forms of research. However to personally reach our target audience, we need to use primary forms of research to find out what it is exactly that our audience will find appealing.

Saleha	Kawsar	Simi
-          Codes and Conventions of Radio news : S	-          A case study of a radio station that produces only London news : P & S	-          Questionnaire : P
-          Defamation : S	-          What are news values? : S	-          Regulation – OFCOM : S
-          Review of 3 radio newscasts from different London radio stations : P & S	-          Review of 3 radio newscasts from different London radio stations : P & S	-          Review of 3 radio newscasts from different London radio stations : P & S
-          Information from a radio practitioner or journalist : P	-          Audience survey and analysis : P	-          Focus group : P
Research into how to: -          Do a vox pop : P & S	Research into how to: -          How to conduct a good news interview : P & S -          Write news : S	Research into how to: -          Present news : S -          Do an outside broadcast : S
-          News Ethics : P	- Deformation : S	- Deformation : S
-          Conversations with your sample audience : P

We have decided to split our research into three parts between our group. The secondary research will be split between us. We have decided to do it like this because we feel that whatever we are researching, we will be able to do this better than another person in the group. It is also more fair and equal if we are researching things between us as well as the factor that our abilities will be best shown doing these specific things eventually bringing out the best of us as a team.

R4 - What is Radio News? What is Local News?

R3 - Radio Stations

R2 - History of Radio

Radio has been around for hundreds of years. It started as a luxury but then became one of the main ways of giving news to a large number of people at one time. However the dependence on radio has changed over the years to due to increase of social media

Relationship discovered between magnetism and electricity

1820

Hans Christian Ørsted discovers the relationship between electricity and magnetism in a very simple experiment. He demonstrates that a wire carrying a current was able to deflect a magnetized compass needle.

First Radiowave to ring a bell

1895

November 1894: In Calcutta the Indian physicist Jagdish Chandra Bose, building on Lodges published work, uses radio wave transmissions to ignite gunpowder and rang a bell at a distance.[

First development of radio

1896

1895: Marconi pursues the idea of building a wireless telegraphy system using Hertzian waves (radio). This is considered the is the first development of a radio system specifically for communication.

First Radio Factory

1899

1898: Marconi opened the first radio factory, on Hall Street, Chelmsford, England, employing around 50 people.

Inventor of Radio - Marconi

1905

1904: The U.S. Patent Office reversed its decision, awarding Marconi a patent for the invention of radio.

Installation of Radio in ships

1910

1910: The Wireless Ship Act was passed by the United States Congress, requiring all ships of the United States traveling over two-hundred miles off the coast and carrying over fifty passengers to be equipped with wireless radio equipment with a range of one-hundred miles. The legislation was prompted by a shipping accident in 1909, where a single wireless operator saved the lives of 1200 people.

Audio Broadcasting

1916

1916: First regular broadcasts on 9XM (now WHA) - Wisconsin state weather, delivered in Morse Code

First US Broadcasting Station

1920

October 1920: Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania became the first US commercial broadcasting station to be licensed when it was granted call letters KDKA. (Their engineer Frank Conrad had been broadcasting from his own station since 1916.)

Television

1920

1920s: Radio was first used to transmit pictures visible as television.

After the War

1948

1948: A new wavelength plan was set up for Europe at a meeting in Copenhagen. Because of the recent war, Germany (which was not even invited) was only given a few medium-wave frequencies, which are not very good for broadcasting. For this reason Germany began broadcasting on USW, "ultra short wave" (nowadays called VHF). After some amplitude modulation experience with VHF, it was realized that FM radio was a much better alternative for VHF radio than AM.

First Pocket Radio

1960

1960: Sony introduced their first transistorized radio, small enough to fit in a vest pocket, and able to be powered by a small battery. It was durable, because there were no tubes to burn out. Over the next twenty years, transistors displaced tubes almost completely except for very high power, or very high frequency, uses.

Out of Space

Sep 1980

Human communication from a space shuttle Sony introduces consumer synthesized radio receiver

Internet

1990

Yahoo! Internet radio broadcasting Internet television broadcasting

Digital Broadcasting

1996

Late 1990s: The digital transmissions began to be applied to broadcasting.

Google!

1998

Google was created

Social Media & Radio

2003

iTunes music service online Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) – digital AM radio with FM-quality sound Second Life MySpace

New Developments

2005+

Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Kik etc. Podcasting.

R1 - My Engagement with the News

My engagement with the news -

Even from the early stages of my life, I have always remembered listening to Capital FM. For a couple of years, I stopped listening, probably because my Dad switched to CD's however since secondary school radio entered our lives again especially in the mornings on the way to school. Now, it is nearly always Capital however there were a few moments when my parents wanted mellow Magic.

 I hardly ever listen to the radio anywhere else other than in the car. On my phone I have my own music but in the car it's just better with the family knowing all the songs, especially this generation's kind of music. It's a conversation starter as well as entertainment.

The general top 40 are nearly always on the stations like Capital, Kiss etc.. However my taste in music has always been a little different. It is only in the past couple years the kind of music I enjoy listening to has been making it's way into the charts.

I'm not much of a 'news' person but if I do listen to the news, it'll either be at home or in the car on the TV. I don't follow around the news unless I am genuinely interested in the story either because I can relate or because it is genuinely an intriguing story such as the missing Malaysian airplanes or the Madeline McCain reports etc... Also, I like hearing about the stories where 'Muslims' are continuously stereotyped as 'terrorists' because of the actions of a single, or a few people which is why even from a young age the 9/11 event has always been one of the most things in the news that I have found fascinating.

Unfortunately I don't listen to any local radio stations simply because I don't know any. I find the stations where the radio presenter is talking or having debates very boring which is probably because I'm more of a person that likes to listen to music and get in my element then get worked about  a debate on the BBC radio.

I think that my listening habits are normal for the typical teenage girl however I've always felt that my taste in music has been much more different to the music tastes of my friends and family. My love for music has come from my Dad, the same way for him it has come from my granddad. I don't listen to the average 'East London' rap because I don't like it.