(D2) Evaluate the Flow of Programme Content and Audio Levels

In this post I will evaluate how our programme flows, and how this works towards the style we wanted. I will also reference radio codes and conventions and how we have maintained them throughout the show.

Codes and Conventions - 

During our radio show, we maintained the use of mainstream radio codes and conventions, so that we would get a professional and realistic product. This means that in some of our segments we will take inspiration from other radio shows such as BBC Radio 1 and Radio X, so that we can use the conventions of popular radio shows (Radio 1) and more popular stylised radio shows (Radio X) to improve the flow of our show.

In our show we used these codes and conventions so that we could have a successful rendition of modern radio, whilst also providing our own twists on these conventions, to make sure that ours is different.

Radio Codes - 

 

There are four radio codes that modern stations will use to get their style and develop their show. The codes are; Speech, Music, Sound, and Silence. We used these codes to create our radio show and enforce our genre and style. Using these codes in certain ways establishes to an audience member what type of radio show it is, and what music they play.

Speech - 

We used speech in our radio show in-between music, for certain shows and for advertisements. We maintained a medium tone for our voices, as well as volume. We would use our dialogue sections to talk about our station's focus, such as bands, gigs and live shows that were happening on show and in the area. We all had similar amounts of voice time, however, I had the most as I was the one who recorded all of the quiz section, which was around 2 and a half minutes towards the end of the show.

In general, we used speech in our radio show, by not using too much we avoided being boring. Contrastingly, by not using too little we avoided being too vague and not engaging.

Having pre-recorded our show, we were at an advantage here as we could check and listen to our content to make sure it sounded interesting. This is something we would not be able to do on a live radio station.

Music - 

We used music a few times in our radio show, as we were a music show for artists around the area of South Yorkshire. This was used when we transferred to and played songs, however we only used music at limited amounts as we did not need to play the full song on a pre-recorded radio show to avoid wasting time for the parts that we actually needed to create.

The songs that we used link directly to our theme of radio show, as they were all created an produced by bands in South Yorkshire. This made sure that we stayed on theme of our show and followed continuity throughout.

We made sure that the songs we used were also somewhat popular. This is because people would prefer, and be more likely to listen to more popular music, as it appeals to more people. 

Sound - 

Sound was used as adlibs, jingles and to generate feeling in our radio show. One of the most prominent uses of sound in our show was in the quiz segment, where sound was used between each answer to create tension in the audience.

These were royalty free tracks taken from a copyright free website, so we could use them for whatever we wanted and however we wanted.

Radio Conventions - 

Radio Jingles  - The jingles we used in the show were just to transfer segments, and were only Madde quick with guitar tracks on GarageBand for IOS. However, these worked well and ensured that we sticked to using common means of radio transitions, which jingles are.

More radio conventions such as weather segments were not used in our show. However we had a quiz section, which is a very popular radio segment among smaller radio stations such as the one which we have created.

More radio conventions were used throughout the recording of our show. This will come apparent when we finish our show and it is listened to by our radio listeners.

Audience Feedback - 

This pie-chart show the amount of people out of 8 listeners that enjoyed our radio show, the total was that 100% of our sampled listeners enjoyed the radio show. This is good as it means that there is an overall positive reaction to the show, as people enjoyed listening to it.

This means that we do not need to make any improvements to the actual radio show, or the dynamic of our recordings.

This question highlighted o how we spoke about bands, which was our main focus of the radio show. The answers to this question were also overwhelmingly positive, which is great as it means that we had good feedback to the main aim of our show. This means that the purpose of our show is being completed well and the audience are enjoying it.

This once again means that we will need no further improvements on the show, as we have nothing from this question that is negative to improve on.

This question was answered with a different format, as it required a more precise measurement. From the answers we can tell that almost two thirds of the listeners though the flow was perfect, however a third of the listeners though that the flow could do with some improvement. This means that they do not think that our show connected seamlessly, and that maybe our speaking could have been a little smoother.

This means that we may need to look back over the show and assess at which points where the show could have a smoother and better flow. However, if we do not have time, this may not be a necessity to change as it is mostly positive feedback.

This question had a text box for an answer. We used this type of answer as we felt that in order to gain informative responses, we needed the most accurate answer that we could get, so we chose to let the sampled listeners type out their positives precisely. This gave us more information as to what went well with the show from the listener's point of view. From most of the answers, we can tell that they specifically liked how we used speech in our show to get across our main points, and the editing of speech during the show.

This was our final question, and we wanted to gain some precise feedback on improvements to our show. This means that we made this question a text box question so that we could get the best answers from the listeners.

From this, we decided that we needed to change the audio levels of some of the talking, which will not take very long. We also decided that we may need to re-record sections as the speaking may not be loud or confident enough. However, we will choose whether to re-record these based on the amount of time that we have.

Evaluation - 

Taking all of this information into account, I can conclude that our radio show went positively for the large majority of questions. I can also see that the listeners enjoyed listening to this 8 minute extract from the show, which means that the show was interesting enough to keep the listeners from getting bored during the show. We used the professional standard codes and conventions here to make sure that the show was interesting for the listeners, whilst also maintaining professional style.

However, a few things in our show did not go very well such as the flow and sound effects in the extract. These would require improvement for a real radio station live on air, however because we pre-recorded this, we will have more time to maintain and re-do our improvements. This means that we can use these negativities from our show and make improvements in order to gain better feedback from those areas. If we were to record a real show, we would make sure that all the sound levels are correct ad that we are at a correct speed and confidence level for speaking on the radio show.