research into commercial radio stations and BBC radio programs

Here is a detailed comparison of three BBC radio stations and three commerical radio stations. The first BBC radio Show I researched was a weekend breakfast show called Edith Bowman and presented Edith Bowman on BBC radio one on every weekend from 7am till 10am.

Edith Bowman's show was a music based program, that played a mix of old and new mainstream music. The show featured phone in's from the listeners where they spoke directly to Edith about what they were doing over the weekend, The show also featured live music from Bon Jovi from the live lounge pre-recored earlier in the week. The sound effects used were mainly computerised robot noices that varied from echos to funky jazz tones. the sound effects were used to introduce the radio show and played throughout the show as well. Station Idents where played inbetween different songs and contained the same echo computerised effects. The language used was mainly formal with just a few uses of moderate slang, this was mainly when Edith interacted with her phone in's. The show was structured to appeal to young adults and teenagers and achieved this playing mainstream music and by Edith chatting directly to her audience about subjects they phoned in to share with her. The shows narrative was to get their audience up out of bed and pre-pare them for the rest of the day in a stess free manner, the narrative structure both linear and chronological.

The next radio show I research was called the news quiz on BBC radio four at 6:30pm on Fridays hosted by Sandi Toksvig. The news quiz is a comedy show that has very formal language while at the same time makes jokes out of the news and politics. The only music used is to introduce the show and close the show. However their are sound effects used that are either laughter or applause from a studio audience. The opening and closing music is Jazz. The show itself contains studio celebrity comedian guests answering questions about the weeks news while mocking it at the same time. The target audience for this show would be older adults between their 30-40s who have an interest in politics and news. the narrative for this radio show was to the mock the news throughout the show while answering questions, again the show was linear and in chronological order. Because BBC radio four target an older audience they include alot less mainstream music and instead contain more speech based shows and when they do play music it tends to be either quite classical or folk music. Another key differance is that BBC radio one use sound effects often in their shows whereas BBC radio four only use sound effects to further convey the narrative. E.G. In the news quiz show they were used to to show laughter after a joke had been told about the question, whereas in the Edith Bowman show they were used many times either as a station ident or played if the phone in interviewee had said something that could trigger a sound effect to be played like they one something or did something exciting over the weekend.

The last BBC radio station I researched was BBC radio Suffolk. The radio show was
Rob Chandler's rock and goal years broadcast every Saturday from 12pm till 2pm. The rock and goal years is specialized show that plays music only from a certain date, this time being only music from 1991 as well being a local sports show. During the show Rob Chandler interviews in the studio local sportmans and sportswomen, Their are also audience phone in's like BBC radio one, however the interviews are focused on sport. E.G. what do feel about Ipswich Towns chances of promotion this year? etc.
Sound effects were hardly used throughout the show, and when they were used it was only during a competition to add appause when someone won. The show used formal language in clear English throughout despite mentioning football banter during phone in's. The narrative of the show was again linear and in chronological order, with the main stories relating to football leading up to the next show. The target audience for this show are likely to be in middle 50's and older because of its constant relation to the local community and events taking place in the community.

I also listened to another BBC radio Suffolk Show called Suffolk Country with Brain Mann. The reason I decided to listen to this show was because it's on every Sunday at 4PM and is a themed show playing only Country music and I thought that was quite an interesting Idea That I could do for my promo. The show started with Brain introducing that he's got some christmas country songs coming up before mention the phone number for requests. He then went straight into a country song. After song finished he read out some E-mails and then cut to an Ident before playing another song. This continued for a while until he had some phone request which he spoke directly on the phone too, listen to what they had to say and played their requests if he had any songs from that artist. The program contained no sound effects other than the ones that on the songs being played, However he apologized for one of the songs because the ending contained sound effects that were really out of place for the rest of show. The content of the show was fairly consistent throughout the show, however he did mention upcoming Country Music tours taking place within Suffolk over the christmas period.