AS Media Studies Group 3
Evaluation by Michael Middlehurst s8605
Our group produced a radio news bulletin. I worked on the script, the blog and had a part in the final product with my group. In my group there was Joel Durkin, Rachael Dennis, Jade Gibson and me.
During the research stage I listened to Wish FM which is a radio station in Wigan my local area. I also found out that 82,000 people listen to Wish FM which was no surprise because it is the best radio station in the area. The presenters of Wish FM are mostly male; this shows how they see males as superior. So to balance this we decided to have two female presenters. I think this worked very well and helped us to get the best out of everybody in the group. This also meant that we all knew what our positions were from day 1. We decided as a group that Rachael and Jade would present the bulletin because they had the most natural voices for radio because they were more confident than me and Joel. Then I and Joel decided on different roles we could play in production and also having our own piece to present. Our ideas ranged from weather and sport to an outside broadcast and various interviews that link to our news bulletin. This was a process we enjoyed because we were able to use our imagination to come up with different scenarios that would work. This was also a very good way to display our teamwork and come to a decision as to what we would do.
Our designated market areas are young adults between the ages of 16 and 30 this is because we are talking about topics that interest our audience. We chose the topics carefully and had meetings out of lesson time to make sure we got it just right and then made a final decision. Even though we had minor disagreements we found it easy to make the right decision that pleased us all. We worked together to make the project fit together and gave each other encouragement along the way which kept our self esteem high because we were able to motivate each other to produce our best effort. I also think that I could have worked harder for the group because I found that I lost concentration quickly and Rachael was very good at setting me tasks that would keep me busy and help me concentrate on the main objective of our project to produce a very good local radio news bulletin. This helped me concentrate and produce my best effort for the group because the tasks I took on were interesting and important so this helped me to focus on my task.
Also a very big part of our project was based on the quality of our script which would either help us succeed or fail. We made a decision that we would all take a bit of the script to do and then feedback on what we all thought I chose the pie eating contest which was my individual piece and the outside broadcast. This is very important because it was a part I could really prove myself with and so I put all my effort into making it the best possible and easy enough so that I could sound natural when I delivered it for the first take. I think that I was very determined to make it good enough and we used my template for this part as the final script we edited minor words to make it sound better and more exciting. We also edited the rest of the script so that it worked well as a show and naturally went together when we produced a first take. This went well because we did it as a team and then feedback to each other constructively so that we could work at getting it perfect. The sting to our broadcast was also very important because it was the start and end of our broadcast. This meant that the sting had to be quick and snappy so that people would remember it for example what Rock Fm has done with 97.4 Rock Fm. It needed to be well planned and witty and also catchy I think that our sting works well and fits into these attributes. The sting works because it is captivating and will catch the attention of the audience and make them want to stay tuned.
In normal news bulletins would start with sharply said points about the news that will follow. This is followed by a more in depth analysis of the points this takes up most of the news bulletins run time. In our news bulletin we decided to use topics that were relevant to the style of the bulletin we were doing so we made a decision to use Barack Obama and for the local news we decided to use a story about the grand arcade. We then move on to our outside broadcast which is at a pie eating contest in Wigan. I chose to present this piece and tried to do it as natural as possible.
I think that the BBC could broadcast our show because it is both factual and original and would get lots of listener’s tuned in. We try to address our audience as naturally as possible and make it seem as though we are talking directly to them which makes the audience feel more involved. We also don’t include anything racially abusive which makes our show better for all listeners. Also the music we used was from original sources so we did not break any copyright laws. This made it harder to find the music but made it more of a challenge which we rose to and succeeded
During this piece of work I have learnt that we have to work together in order to succeed. I also learned that I sometimes lose focus and need to concentrate more on the objective of the task. I also learned how to edit pieces of sound to get the best bits for the piece of work. This means we could be selective with our choice of clips. I also learnt how to cut and fade different sound clips into one another and separate bits of one clip then move them around into a different order. This helped me to understand the equipment.
I noticed that lots of people liked our piece and gave us constructive criticism this helped us to edit the piece to make it better and more professional. It also helped us to realise different pitfalls in our project which could be fixed before we handed in the final product. This also helped us to get the best out of the equipment we had at the college and the technical expertise of the technicians. We asked people who had never heard the show for there feedback because they could be unbiased and give an honest opinion of how we had performed. I think that the feedback we got was very honest and we took the comments and applied them to our work to make it run more smoothly.
These are some of the views of people we asked:-
“I think that this radio show worked well and was very informative. But it could have been snappier.” – Adam
“I liked the news bulletin and found it quite good” – Natalie
“I think the sting of the show was very original this stood out to me” – Matt
“I think that this news bulletin is better than radio 1 because it actually gels together” – Jodie
“The only improvements I would make to the show is that the pie eating contest was said a little too quick” – Tom