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.