What opportunities do radio shows provide audiences to engage with the product? Make reference to Have You Heard George’s Podcast to support your answer [10]
Knee Jerk Reaction
- Digitally convergent media has allowed for many opportunities for audiences to engage with HYHGP
- A range of digitally convergent opportunities, most notably the website common ground have been provided
Plan
- Producer
- Audience
- Stuart Hall
- Common Ground
- Active and passive audiences
- Accessibility
- Fandom theory
- Jenkins
- Ideology
- Niche
- Social media
- Stereotypes
- Representation positioning audiences
- Pick and mix
- Unconventional
- Shirky - production values
- Preferred negotiated oppositional
- Criticising government
- Criticising prison system
- Emotional mode of address
- Left wing ideological bias
- Rap and hip hip
- Low fi production values
- Producers
- Common Ground
- Social media pages
- Interacting with music/music recommendations
- Henry Jenkins
- Clay Shirky - George’s amaurish mode of address, using sound effects and actively walking around the streets while recording (It’s nice out here) constructys a more relatable mode of address!
- Stuart Hall
- Reception
- Preferred, negotiated oppositone
- Preferred reading of Grenfell - reflect on what’s wrong in society, and how the government has let certain people down
- Social and political issues - left leaning ideologies
- Relaxing mode of address - chill out with George’s relaxing voice!
- Direct mode of address, parasocial relationship!
- Tone of voice and accent: George is clearly black and from London
- Available through BBC sounds, more accessdible to nioche audience
- Funded by BBC
- PBS
- Accessible anywhere, either through streaming through the app or direct download
- A range of different topics appeals to a range of niche audiences, plurality, a pluralistic approach!
Audience positioning
One excellent example of an opportunity for audience interaction can be found on the Common Ground website, a non BBC affiliated website website that is less to promote the podcast than provide fans ways of interacting with it. Powered by Chat GTP, the website uses digitally convergent media to directly address the audience as George in ways not previously possible. Through answering a series of questions, the audience are able to interact with and discover facts about George, which allows the audience to form a parasocial relationship with George that would not be possible with old media. From a stereotypical perspective, younger audiences are more likely to engage with digitally convergent media, and George provides the young, potentially black target audience with a range of further resources to explore. Henry Jenkins argues that audiences are increasingly actively engaging with media products, and this is a fantastic example of fandom. However beyond this, Common Ground serves another purpose. Younger demographics are far less likely to listen to radio, and therefore websites like Common Ground allow for a larger and more diverse audiences to reached, by using digital tech to provide active audience responses
Digital technology also allows accessibility of the podcast, through the Sounds Web portal and the ability to stream or download
(d) Explain how radio programmes are shaped by the organisations that produce them. Refer to HYHGP to support your points. [12]
- TV licence
- Niche audience
- Deliberate low production values
- Unconventional for a radio, example walking out his house and announcing “it's nice out here’
- Extremely personal and emotional modes of address
- Surprising twists and unconventional narratives
- Social issues and specific problems
- Unconventional use of sound effects