Media Industries and Audiences: Radio 1 Breakfast Show

Notes from AS:

Media radio 1 from elleguyan


New content:

PBS - Refers to broadcasting intended for public benefit rather than to serve purely commercial interest
Remit - inform, educate, entertain

5th December with Greg James (Yesterday's Quiz, Wednesday fun and Ten Minute Takeover)

Songs and British Artists (clear variety of genres) 

1. Not3s (rapper)
2. Loyle Carner (hip hop)
3. MK (american), Jonas Blue and Becky Hill (house)
4. Sam Fender (alternative rock)
5. Mumford and sons (folk rock, alternative rock)
6. You me at six (rock band)
7. Ellie Goulding (electro pop, synth pop, etc)
8. The streets (alternative hip hop)
9. Disciples (house)
10. Friendly fires (indie rock)
11. Jess Glynne (pop, R&B, dance, soul)
12. Unknown T (grime)
13. Duke Dumont (edm)
14. Clean Bandit - (electronic)
15. Little mix - (pop)
16. Biffy clyro (alternative rock)
17. James Arthur (pop)
18. Jax Jones (house)
19. Lewis Capaldi (pop)
20. George Ezra (blues)
21. M-22 (dance)
22. 1975 (indie pop)

22 out of 43 are British (53%)

–List 5 British Contemporary songs.

Jonas Blue, Little Mix, Jess Glynne, George Ezra, James Arthur 

-Emerging artists

Sam Fender, Unknown T

Emerging artists are important to radio 1 as they allow new songs to be discovered and help out. This can be good for young people who often support new artists and enjoy listening to new music as long as it is good. This is different to other radio's who may have less budget and therefore they want to gain good profit by playing songs that definitely attract listeners. Radio X for example plays music specific to their audience which are largely white adult males, therefore they may not listen to emerging artists with little reputation. 

Overall Notes -- 

(summary) Weather, Cardi B's sad breakup and clip of her speaking

(music gets louder in between speaking)

-Talks about future features on the radio show and the time they're happening 

-2:45 song starts (Halsey, then 5sos) 

-Talks to a guest ?

-Harry Redknapp (bug buster challenge) and how he doesn't know about Toy Story - soft news

-Talking about guests such as Laurie who is being sent something but abroad, makes joke about postage cost, and how somebody hasn't heard of Hey Jude

-Keeps referencing Harry Redknapp joke 

-At 29-30 minutes some hard news starts, homelessness, inspection of race course as horses died. then sport and man city, west ham, bournemouth, Brighton etc and premier league. weather 

-Reading what 'Chloe' said, social media or text in? Interactive 

-Said 'soz' 

-competition

-'yesterday's quiz' talking to guest about his training for triathlon, then quizzes him 

-makes mistake and laughs - 'what colour is Rudolph the red nose reindeers nose' 

-At 59-30 minute, talks about strikes, football. weather update 

Every half an hour there is a news cycle in which they briefly mention any hard news as well as weather updates and football. Football keeps it lighthearted and prevents people from switching off, however it is still short for those who are only interested in the music. It is beneficial to run on a half hour cycle as people who listen to other stations may still tune in every half hour for the brief news. 

•The Radio 1 Breakfast Show with Greg James is broadcast weekdays from 06.30-10.00 am.

•The Breakfast Show has been running since 1967, but Greg James took over as the 16th presenter in 2018.

•BBC Radio 1 is broadcast on FM, DAB, Freeview, Freesat, Virgin, Sky, or online via BBC Radio Player (including via the phone or tablet app) where it can be heard live or streamed for 30 days.

•It is produced by the BBC from its own studios at Broadcasting House in London.

•There’s a useful BBC Academy podcast (with transcript) about how the programme is produced http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/articles/art20170619095219011

•The music is largely playlisted – what is going to be played on daytime Radio 1 is decided by a committee; they choose around 40 records each week for repeated daytime play

•(A-list records get 25 plays a week, B-list 15, and C-list eight to 10).

–How does the content suit the target demographic of 15 – 25 year olds?

There is a lot of humour and young language such as 'soz', informal language. The 'yesterday's quiz' is fairly funny and engages the audience as it is similar to challenges that they may look at on their other chosen platforms such as YouTube

–What does the above content hope to achieve?

Engages the audience and hopes to turn them into regular viewers. It is very entertaining. Challenges such as this are likely to be made into YouTube clips which reaches a wider audience. 

–What news features were aired, why are they relevant to a youth audience. 

-football and the weather can be relevant as young people might be interested in football, or want to go out themselves and need to know the weather. If not, they may be interested in celebrity gossip such as Cardi B. There may be some youths who want to hear about the hard news and express their opinions on twitter as part of the new culture to protest and share ideas on social media.

As the BBC is the world's largest producer, it can create original high quality media content and high production costs. They are able to fly out celebrity guests and have a consistent radio station running even through the night when profits are lower. It also means they can afford to potentially lose profits by playing a range of music genres that some may not like as well as new artists who havent been heard of. 

Audience segmentation -- 

Gender is targeted by radio 1 as they have a range of different elements. Stereotypically, males will enjoy news about football and females will enjoy celebrity gossip. There are certain songs that apply specifically to a gender, for example Jess Glynne's sings about women and confidence in 'Thursdays' which males may find catchy but otherwise probably wouldn't relate to the song. 

In terms of ethnicity, culture can have an affect in terms of rap, soul, blues being part of black culture and others having different preferences. 

Host

There is debate as to whether radio 1 made the right choice in Greg James as he is funny, but is a safe option. 32 year old male, and therefore older than the target audience. He is charismatic and colloquial which may intrigue younger people more, however I feel that most young people are more interested in podcasts by people they follow rather than a radio show by a random funny presenter that they likely don't know. 

A female may have been a good choice but it may have been perceived as a 'token' and an attempt to be politically correct, and as a result annoyed certain people more. 

Maintaining audiences

On YouTube, Radio 1 has 3.5m subscribers compared to Radio 2’s paltry 42,069. Radio 1 has 2.55m Facebook likes compared to Radio 2’s 633,053. Radio 2 may have higher listening figures for its live shows, but the reach of Radio 1 – particularly with viral content – is much higher on social media than it is for Radio 2,
As Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper explained this morning: “Radio 1’s Listen, Watch, Share strategy means that RAJAR is only part of the story. Alongside the 10.5m listeners, our YouTube videos have received over 1.4 billion views and we have 8.7m followers across social media.” The reason Radio 1 has so many social media followers is because it’s producing content that works on YouTube and on social media as well as on radio. These things are funny, they’re usually video-based, and they just happen to act as breadcrumbs that entice people on social media to tune in. When it gets famous guests, Radio 1 plays games like Innuendo Bingo or Playground Insults that are rivalling Carpool Karaoke, the hugely popular spot from James Corden’s massive US TV show, in terms of actual funniness and in what execs like to call ‘shareability’.