Ideas

Grading:

It is time to create your final production and the work that you have created for your other units will make up part of this live show.

Your brief is to produce a one hour radio programme, that will be broadcast on PGFM, during the daytime schedule and be in the genre of .......

• The breakfast Show (People getting up and travelling to work or school)
  
• School's Out (Aimed at primary school students and their families)
• The lunchtime chart hour (Aimed at students 11-16 who will be listening on their lunch hour)
• Drive-time (Aimed at people travelling home from work or school)

Have a listen to some examples to help you generate some ideas..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/

The show must be appropriate for younger listeners but you can choose the style of the programme.

You must evidence the production process that you go through and the remainder of this blog will help you set this out....

1. Comment on your current situation by answering the following questions...

• How much time have you got to produce the programme?
• How much money do you have to spend?
• Who will be in your broadcat team and what will they be doing?
• What are the restrictions of your brief?
• What resources are available to you, for the live show and for the production of pre-recorded content?

Budget.......

You have £500 to spend on your show and the pre-production process.

(All prices are to hire per-hour)

Edirol Roland D-90 voice recorder = £15

Mp3 voice recorders = £10

Imac editing suite = £20

Macbook editing suite = £20

Recording Studio = £25 per hour.

2. Mindmap your ideas...

Have a look at the following video and try and utilise bubbl.us, an excellent mindmapping website, free and easy.


Analyse each idea and then select which idea you will be producing, explaining why.

3. Produce a treatment, to give to your client.....

You must present this to the directors of the PGFM and they must give you approval to broadcast

Include:

• Fellow presenters and production team and justification for each role.(Skills, personality, reliability etc)
  
• Content outline + list of pre-recorded material to be included
  
• Target Audience + breakdown of who will be listening and why? What is the demographic of the audience? Why will your programme appeal to specific genders,age groups, intelligences?
  
• Resources needed
• Budget
• Project Schedule = Date of show, practice shows, pre-recorded content ie; interviews, phone calls.
• What the competitors are doing successfuly and unsuccessfuly.
• Explanation of why people will be listening
  
• Contingency plan ie; if you run out of time, member of team drops out, guest cancels etc.

Planning and Research

You must be professional in the way you research and record information for your content.

You must document the following..........

1. Any primary sources that you have used to help construct the content ie;

• Questionnaires to provide statistics and results if you are discussing a particular issue or event
• Interviews with specialists, celebrities etc
• Your own observations

2. Any secondary sources you have used ie; newspapers, magazines, books, audio, visual, electronic etc

Production

You must create a schedule/diary of events to doucument your preperation for production.

In you diary keep a note of....regular team meetings, job allocation, task definitions and deadlines, proposed schedule, agendas and minutes

Example template: available on simply click, in AS/A2 --- Unit 3
You must also create a schedule for your one hour show, explaining what is going to be broadcast when. You may want to use the remplate below, available on simplyclick, in live radio.

Evaluation

LIVE RADIO
Production : Evaluation : PartcofPD

Purpose
What was your aim? Did you actually achieve your purpose.? Your own personal opinion.
Now …..you must gather audience feedback by playing your programme to members of your target audience..... or arranging for some of them to actually listen live during the broadcast. You should then write under the following headings :

Audience
What did they say about the show? Did they take your preferred reading? Or did they have an oppositional reading? Why?
What did they say about the following things….

Representation issues.
Did you give a positive image of the bands? ... what might you have included to change this image?
Did you play songs by only male artists or was there a mixture?
Were different ethnic groups catered for?
Were the requests only from girls... or boys.. or both?
Did you make fun of the ‘older generation’ by commenting badly about ‘older’ music if you played any? Can you see why this could be a problem?
Were you biased in anything you said?
Did your show sound realistic for the genre?

Technical issues
What were the levels like?.... did you keep between 4/5 on the PPM?
Was the balance of voice/music o.k?
Did you cut off anyone’s voice by fading the voices in too slowly?
Did you remember to always follow a commercial break with a jingle and then a piece of music?
Were there any embarrassing gaps?
Did you ever leave the mike faders up by mistake?
Did you remember to wear your headphones during speech segments? Why is this important?
Did you reach the news accurately and on time?
Did you vary the way you linked the music tracks together? Sometimes voice… sometimes jingles/ID’s.

Conventions/Narrative
What do you think was typical of this genre? Make a list.
What would be the same in a programme on a professional station?
Do they have any advantages over you?
Features of good narrative include.... the ‘tease’ at the start of the show.... the ‘enigma’.... ‘the resolution’.... did you use any of them?

Own performance... self evaluation
Did you learn any new skills?
How do you think you did? ..... strengths.... weaknesses.
Were you a good team member? Why?
Did you argue?

Future targets
What would you improve on next time?
Produce a brainstorm of some ideas on:
1. PROMOTING your show next time, to attract more listeners. Advertising?…. Web site?
2. How else might you DISTRIBUTE it, apart from a live broadcast like the one you have just done on Radio Grangefield/PGFM? CD?.... Web site?...