Unit 1- Research Techniques for the Media Industries

PGFM is a radio station ran by school and will be broadcast on an FM frequency for a two week period of time. Therefore the primary target audience is students in years 7-13 and a secondary target audience is the parents and family of the students. To accommodate for the primary and secondary target audiences’ wants and needs a wide variety of programmes should be broadcast. For example a discussion show in which the public can phone in with their questions and opinions would be appropriate for the afternoon as housewives will be the main group of people listening. Another example is having a show based around the local area and involving the community with the station by asking people such as counsellors and leaders of community groups, seeing as older people will be more interested in this type of programme I would need to come up with a younger version of the show, therefore I had the idea of asking primary schools to bring up a few children to take part in games. Lastly, another example which would appeal to the majority of listeners would be a programme which the presenters interview as many famous people within the media such as Hirsty from Galaxy and Andrew Edwards from BBC Radio Leeds.

Another factor, which will affect PGFM’s primary and secondary target audiences, is the type of music that should be played. To accommodate for the younger primary target audience I will play modern, contempory music such as Beyonce Knowles and JLS, also to appeal to the older secondary target audience I will play classic music and 80's such as ABBA and Duran Duran. By playing a varied combination of music I can appeal to both target audiences and therefore get more listeners than just playing one specific genre such as R&B or country.

To make the radio station possible to run I will need a large amount of technical resources as well as money and time. I will need approximately 20 MAC Apple computers so that students can work on producing speech packages and other pieces to be played on the radio. On the MAC machine I will need to have the appropriate and best editing software to ensure that the students can produce the best work possible. Other equipment that the students will need to use are hand held voice recorders to create vox pops, which can then be placed in the appropriate place on their piece of work. To help connect different recorders and other technology to the MAC there we be a large amount of cables needed as well. In terms of what technical equipment will be need in the actual radio station there will be much more needed. Firstly the radio studio will need to be sound proofed and fitted with a mixing desk to change the sound levels, several pairs of headphones will have to be installed into the mixing desk to that the presenters and guests can hear themselves clearer, to be able to speak there will need to be approximately 4 microphones placed in appropriate places. So that the station can be broadcast to the local areas a transmitter, aerial and receiver must be set up.

The people who will help me run the station are people within the school such as students, teachers and technicians. I will also need a team of students to be my advertising team to help raise money for the station by getting local companies to pay for an advert to be played. I will need another team of students to be a marketing team who will help promote PGFM so that people are aware that it is on the aire. Anyone and everyone who is involved in the stations running will have to have communication skills, this is vital because everyone needs to know what they are doing and not have any doubts within or surrounding the task which they have been assigned. Another vital factor to have is good time management, the running of the station needs to be on time and run smoothly without any mistakes and therefore people cannot arrive late. The people which are involved with the technical and production tasks need to have good technical and editing skills so that if anything goes wrong then they will be able to fix it quickly and efficiently. As the station is only local and ran by the school there will not be a large amount of money going spare, therefore the people will mainly have to volunteer to be involved with PGFM.

A Restricted Service License

Maximum 28 Day Broadcast

Short Term RSL

Registration Fee: £400

PRS: £31.85 Per Day

PPL: £35 Per Day

MCPS: £1.94 Per Day

Wireless Telegraphy Act licence: £40 Per Day

Authority to broadcast: £30 Per Day

Advertising: £500

Total Of: £4786.32

Overall I feel that my plan is extremely realistic. I feel this because the local community is very supportive of new projects that can involve everybody no matter what their age, ethnicity or race. Because of this I think I will have a vast amount of community support. I have also spoken in the assemblies of years 7-11 and have had a large amount of interest from them as well as year 12 and 13. However if I have not got enough money or if prices raise which means I cannot spend as much as I had intended to I have thought of several ways, which I can scale down the project down a few levels. These ideas are by not being on the aire for as long and perhaps shorten the period from two weeks down to just one week and another idea is to involve just a small group of students so that not as much technical equipment such as MAC's and recording and editing equipment is needed to be invested. A way of getting PGFM more well known is by created pod casts for the official PGFM website which can be made downloadable. I have investigated into Galaxy 105's webpage and the most popular functions and modes of listening online are through pod casts and a 'Listen Live' function. Therefore if these methods have worked for Galaxy then I am sure that they can also work for PGFM.

Task 1: P1 M1 D1

The average population of Leeds is 715,404, approximately 369,570 of the 715,404 are females and the rest of the population (345,834) are males. I went to the local library in Pudsey and used the referencing system and typed in Pudsey, I then found a book entitled Pudsey Official Guide by Ed J Burrow & Co. The publishers are Cheltenham and London in 1970 and the quotation that told me the population of Pudsey was found on page 13:

"It has a population of about 38,000"

Task 3- P1 M1 D1

The most listened to radio station in the UK is BBC Radio 2. It is hard to find out how many hours the average person listens to the radio, therefore I will have to turn this secondary research into primary research and ask people in my school and the local community to answer a questionnaire. Galaxy 105 broadcast over several regions, these regions are Kingston-upon-Hull, East Riding, Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield.

A Restricted Service License is commonly referred to as an RSL and is given to radio stations and TV stations broadcasting in the United Kingdom. These licenses are granted by OFCOM. A short term restricted service license covers a radio station broadcast for a maximum of 28 days. The cost for one day is £35 + VAT. For example PGFM is on aire for a two period, excluding weekends, therefore in total 10 days. The cost for an RSL to be granted to PGFM would be £35x10= £350 + the VAT charges.

A PRS is the official trading name of the Performing Right Society. The PRS protects the radio station against copyright. The PRS works by collecting the license fees and distributes them as royalties for the writers, publishers and artists of the music.

http://www.prsformusic.com/users/businessesandliveevents/musicforbusinesses/Pages/WhatisPRSforMusic.aspx

A MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society) protect all the worlds’ music but enable individuals to use the music that they need to.

http://www.breed-media.co.uk/article/striving-to-be-a-breed-apart

PPL are a company that gives UK radio stations, television stations and Internet radio stations to use sound recordings and videos without breaking the law.

http://www.ppluk.com/en/About-Us/What-we-do/

Task 4:

What is the average amount of time per week that people in your school spend listening to the radio?

What is the most popular radio station in your school?

What is the most popular way of listening to radio?

Task 5:

Terry Wogan is a famous media personality ever since the late 1960s and the public loved his Irish charm. Due to his vast popularity in the United Kingdom he is often referred to as a "national treasure". Terry Wogan is best known for his work with the charity Children in Need and for presenting The Eurovision Song Contest, however he also presented a breakfast show on BBC2 entitled Wake Up To Wogan.

One of the reasons why Wogan's breakfast show was the most listened to is because his nature to go off the course of the subject and ramble on and also incorporating witty banter and jokes with his producer Paul Walters, proved popular with audience listeners of various ages. The other reason why the show was proven a popular hit was because of the shows high level of audience interaction as the listeners could email, phone or write into the show.

In 2005 Wake Up To Wogan had an audience of approximately 8 million. During this period, Wogan was the highest paid BBC radio presenter as he was earning an £800,000 a year salary. When asked in an interview for Hello when he was questioned about his salary Terry Wogan responded by saying:

"The amount they said was true and I don't give a monkey's about people knowing it. Nor do I feel guilty. If you do the maths, factoring in my eight million listeners, I cost the BBC about 2p a fortnight. I think I'm cheap at the price".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Wogan#Early_career

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3654837/Top-of-the-morning-Terry.html

Being a producer of a radio show is very stressful, as you have to ensure that you have a range of features and also a range of different music so that your show will be suitable for both target audiences. For example if a station had a primary target audience of teenagers the music, which they would mainly, play would be R&B music such as Beyonce. However to appeal to the secondary target audience of adults more 80's music should as Wham! should be played. As part of being a producer it is important to have an accurate running order so that you are aware of what should be coming up later on the show, this is to help with preparation and also avoid any mistakes whilst live on aire. The same responsibilities also apply to being a presenter on a radio show. This is because you need to be prepared for any change in schedule or any possible problems that may occur so that the presenters can be prepared with how to deal with them. Having good communication skills is an important factor to have for being both a presenter and producer.

I feel that currently radio is on a downhill slope and is not as popular as it used to be. Radio used to be more popular than TV when it was first invented as not everybody could afford a television set, however now televisions are not as expensive and therefore more people have both types of entertainment. Now television is the more popular form of entertainment, however as technology is constantly developing into more advanced forms radio is now on the rise in the popularity stakes as technology such as pod casts have being developed and also the "Listen Live" function on the radio stations website helps to make radio popular. Overall I still think that television is more popular compared to radio but radio is making a comeback thanks to different forms of technology.

Radio Station Proposal

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Task 9: