Radio Evaluation

Is it suitable for the Genre and what has been included to make
it suitable?
I think that my radio broadcast is suitable for the genre and target audience because the
songs that we have included are more suited to younger people. Same Old War is a rock song
and Blank Space was originally a pop song by Taylor Swift, which was very popular with young
people, so they may be interested to hear a different version.
Also, we used a modern news theme which will appeal to younger people. We couldnt get the
CFM News theme so we were going to use the BBC pips and the Radio 2 theme however we
decided to use the Radio 1 theme because it will make the news more interesting for the
target audience, whereas the BBC pips are very traditional and could be seen as old
fashioned.
Another thing that we wanted to achieve with our radio broadcast was to make it appeal to
local people by providing them with local news rather than national. So we included lots of
different news stories from around the county.

What has been done well?

One thing that I particularly liked about our radio broadcast was the way we chose one artist
and played songs of different styles from them, this is a unique feature of our radio broadcast
because most others just play lots of songs from different artists randomly.
Another thing I liked was the timing of the Newsbeat theme with the reading of the news. It fit
very well and created a good effect by making the news more interesting to listen to and
giving it a beat to follow, rather than just being read in silence. It also helped to drown out
some of the background noise that the microphone inevitably picked up because it was being
recorded in a classroom.

How has my final idea changed from my initial idea?

Initially we were going to use the CFM news theme tune but then we deicided to use the Radio
1 Newsbeat theme because the CFM theme wasnt available to download, we still thought
that the Newsbeat theme suited our target audience of teenagers because it is very modern
and makes the news more interesting to listen to.
To start with we were also going to include local travel news but due to time constraints we
decided against it. We also didnt think that it would suit our target audience very well
because most of the people who listened to it would be too young to drive so the travel news
wouldnt interest them.
We also wanted the presenters to start talking before the music ended but this effect was very
hard to create using the basic editing software that we had in school.

What could be improved?

To improve our radio broadcast, we could have used more effects, such as the presenter
coming in early to speak when the music is still playing, this is a very popular technique that
is used by lots of presenters. However you could argue that our radio show was all about the
music so we wanted the audience to hear the entire track, uninterrupted.
We could have also included local travel and sports news to improve the show. This would
have increased the local feel of the radio station further. For example we could have talked
about Carlisle United or Workington Reds.

Also I thought that our show sounded very scripted, a good radio broadcaster can improvise
on the spot and doesnt necessarily need a script, or they just use it for cues. Whereas it was
very obvious that we were reading our speaking parts.

Feedback
Quantitative feedback from listeners
Score (/10)
Section
of
broadcas
t
Sound
Quality

Comments
Perso
n1
5

Perso
n2
4

Perso
n3
7

Perso
n4
4

Perso
n5
3

Averag
e
4.6

Music
Choice

10

8.8

Suitabilit
y for
target
audience

10

10

9.2

Likelihoo
d to
listen
again

10

Score is too low.

Sound quality needs
to be improved. This
would require better
quality microphones
and a quieter
environment.
Good average score
and consistent
results. Music
choice was clearly
liked by listeners.
Highest average
score of all the
categories.
Listeners obviously
thought that the
broadcast suited the
target audience.
Mixed scores. This
was expected
because I asked a
range of people.
Some will like it
some wont.

I also carried out some qualitative feedback using a questionnaire to find out what people
thought about my radio broadcast and received the following feedback:

I liked that you added in the news at the start and that it had some background music going along with it
that gave it more atmosphere.
It was well edited and I liked the start where the news sound effect was in the background, it sounded
professional.
You need more talking and maybe a longer conversation because the 2 songs dont give you enough time to
talk.
Try making the speech clearer as the background noise sometimes overpowers the speech.
The 2 songs both suit the audience well but the news needs to be aimed more at this age range than
everyone.

The news at the start may not appeal to the teenagers, although the rest of the radio audio would be great for
younger teens.

What will I change after feedback

After I collected my feedback I decided that if I had more time I would re-record my audio in a
quiet room, so there is no background noise, and I would use a better quality microphone to
improve the overall quality of the audio.
I would also increase the length of the discussion about the song and maybe talk more about
the band in general because it was rather brief and it felt like it had just been squeezed in.
As far as the news is concerned I think that, even though there was some negative feedback
about it, I would leave it in because it makes the radio show sound more complete and
professional, and some young people are interested in the news. I may even include sport
news because lots of young people are interested in sport.

Legal and Ethical Constraints

While making my radio broadcast I came3 across some legal and ethical constraints that
stopped meant I had to compromise on certain things. For example:
I was limited to the music and theme music that I could include in my radio broadcast
because it had to be downloaded from a site that allows free downloads for education. As I
mentioned above, this stopped me from being able to use the CFM theme music as I could
only access the Radio 1 Newsbeat theme.

I also made sure while making my radio broadcast that I didnt include any information
that could potentially offend certain people.

As far as health and safety is concerned I took the following measures:

I didnt work on the computer for more than one hour at a time without taking a break
Food and drinks are not allowed in the school computer rooms so there is no chance of
accidental damage to the hardware leading o loss of data.
All of the school computers are fitted with effective anti virus software so that I had
piece of mind when I was downloading files from the internet.
All of my work for this unit was stored on a memory pen which is backed up onto an
external hard drive regularly.