Year 2 - Introduction to the Radio Industry

Component 2: Section B: Media Industries & Audiences

The next text we look at is an unusual one that many people your age will not have heard of. When it first began it was broadcast on Radio 4 but now podcasts seems to have take over as the new form of 'talk radio'. It is now only available as a podcast but there have not been any new episodes in nearly two years.

Late Night Woman’s Hour is a spin-off from the long-running BBC Radio 4 daily magazine

programme, Woman’s Hour. It began broadcasting in 2015 on a limited basis but became

so popular that it began a permanent run as a monthly, then in 2018, a weekly podcast.

Late Night Woman’s Hour is recorded weekly, hosted by Emma Barnett (occasionally

founder Lauren Laverne) and features female guests from a range of backgrounds

including science, health and entertainment.

Each episode focuses on a particular theme relevant to its female audience e.g. ‘Lost

Friends’ and ‘Extreme Breastfeeding’. The original broadcast was at 11pm on Thursday

nights, which meant explicit and honest discussions could be had. Since becoming a

podcast, the show has been less controversial.

We need to understand this text from an Industry and Audience point of view.

INDUSTRY:

•    Production, distribution and circulation of media products.

•    The specialised and institutionalised nature of media production, distribution and circulation.

•    How recent technological changes impacts upon production, distribution and circulation.

•    The effect of ownership, vertical integration and diversification.

•    Use of marketing to maintain varieties of audiences.

•    Regulation.

•    Impact of new media on regulation.

CORE THEORIES:

Curran and Seaton

 

AUDIENCE:

•    Grouping and categorisation including demographics and psychographics.

•    How audiences are targeted.

•    How audiences can be constructed.

•    Relationship between media technologies and patterns of consumption and response.

•     How audiences interpret the media including DIFFERENT responses to the same text (Hall’s audience readings).

•    How audiences INTERACT with the media and can be actively involved in media production.

 

CORE THEORIES:

Demographics, Audience Profiling, 4Cs model, Opinion Leaders, Bandura’s Media Effects (Hypodermic Syringe), Desensitisation, Gerbner’s Cultivation theory & Hall’s Responses (readings) theory. 

Start a new post on your blogs called Introduction to the Radio Industry. Click on the link below and work through the activities, questions and research tasks. If you finish before the end of the lesson you can move on to the next lesson or make flash cards of the information you have learnt so far or research more about the radio industry.

Lesson One

Lesson Two

Lesson Three