Evaluation- Journey from Preliminary Task to my Finished Radio Extract

In conclusion, I have taken in a lot of experience  throughout the whole entire blog. I now feel confident and have came a long way from my preliminary task such as evolving my knowledge and skills during the time, especially with the technology such as sound effects, music and adding links.

There is only a small similarity between my preliminary task and my final extract, however, not referring to the same audience. The similarity between the two are just the jingles itself.

When I came to edit and record my preliminary task I had no comprehension about what could be achieved through the software, as I never heard of adobe audition before or how to use it. At the beginning, I found the script hard to do because I did not know the layout or what to expect or what to put in it. This meant that I was feeling satisfactory with my final preliminary task. I saw the whole process as a means of learning something new, which would help me later on in life, if I ever get a chance to use these type of technologies again. Once I had finished my preliminary task I made a list of everything I felt I had learnt from the teachings of teachers and researching on youtube how to use certain softwares. I realised I had to know all of these things, before creating my real radio extract. These included planning and research into all of the conventions of existing radio researching and better layout in terms of choosing the right actors for my radio.

Preliminary Task

What I realised which was most important, was the recording and editing of my preliminary task, with the technology  which enabled me to create almost any audio effects that I wanted, which I have mentioned in my previous post. By using these audio effects, I can make my news stories be more realistic by the place of it occurring. With this, it makes the listeners notice that these news stories were taken from different locations. In comparison to this, I had the opportunity to change and mix sound effects and other effects, which meant that I could be very creative and stylistic with my adverts and the outside broadcasts that accompanied some of my news stories. As a result I decided to script two adverts such as the restaurant advert and the car accident advert,  also news stories such as Edmonton Tesco Fire and the Gaming Museum being opened. These type of adverts challenged me to be creative by adding layers of sound effects and music. 

Finally, when you listen to my preliminary task and my finished radio task of Enfield Pop FM, you will see a dramatic improvement and the experience which I picked up from the whole time and the type of decisions I made for my radio show overall. 

Evaluation- Technologies you have used

Overall, throughout my whole blog, I have used a range of technologies that have been really important and useful, in helping me not only record and edit my radio show, but also in creating the blog, where I have been able to put a lot of thought, ideas and detail, in all my research and planning and my evaluation. I have used a range of software and hardware throughout all elements of my AS coursework, such as Blogger, Adobe Audition, Soundcloud. These type of technologies has taught and achieved me many things that I did not even know about from the beginning.

By using Blogger, it is just like Microsoft Word Document but with extra tools which you would not expect.  This software, has meant that I can record each of my research and planning tasks and include images, sound clips and videos of various parts of the planning process. This has also given my content structure to follow with different posts which makes my blog look neat, even with changing the background. 

Another software called Soundcloud was also really useful, as I was able to upload all of my audio files but first, I had to convert it to MP3 and upload it to Soundcloud as blogger would not accept any other audio files from Soundcloud. With this, I could upload the majority of my radio station and the edited versions, however, you had to go to the html page and paste the link in, so the clips can appear in the blog.

Before, planning my radio station, I had to record local news from local stations. By doing this, I used a software called Tunein Radio. This software was only available for mobile phones, accessing from the app store or google play store.  The Tunein Radio app was helpful, as it enabled me to record extracts from radio shows so that I could carefully re-listen to any stations and pausing it at certain points and analysis the news values and 5W's. However, the disadvantage with using the app was that you had to pay for it, however, it was useful to get as it required the facilities you needed. 

After all this, while recording my radio preliminary task and my final radio show, I had to use a complex software called Adobe Audition. This software allowed me to record my voices for my radio, edit the voices to make it more realistic, add music to the voices, mixing the voices, and adding effects to my advertisements and news stories such as voxpops and soundbites. 

Evaluation - Audience

Right through my research and planning, I did a number of tasks that were directly related to audience, including primary research which I had to distribute a questionnaire. I created a questionnaire to find out about my potential audience's listening habits and what they like, and I looked at OFCOM to get a better understanding of the target audience of existing radio stations that I felt were similar to mine. I even looked at existing radio websites, to see what they might indicate about audience. By doing this, I have created my very own OFCOM service sheet for my radio.

Primary research for audience

My questionnaire

Secondary Research

Radio station websites

The research I have done for this has really helped me get a better and border understanding of who my audience should be, and how other stations target their audience, for example songs being played or the way the presenter speaks.

My station, Enfield Pop FM, is a local radio station targeting audiences in the London area. My service sheet that I created shows my radio as a local station, and music with service for under 34s in Enfield.

My OFCOM service sheet

OFCOM service sheets

In comparison to this, many of the content in my radio is suitable for the local audience, targeting them directly. Fine examples of segments on my show would directly appeal to the local audience in the Enfield borough including the majority of the news stories which most of which have taken place in Enfield and other closer borough's. The jingles make it clear to the audience that Enfield Pop FM is a station that services the London area. A great deal of my research into local news involved thinking about how the stories I had looked at were directly targeting a specific audience, even including the 5W's and the news values.

Local news analysis

Local news analysis 2

Comparing local news

Comparing national news

Advertisements that I wrote and edited, that I thought would appeal to both younger male and female genders included a car accident advert, and a restaurant advert. I felt very strongly about including adverts in my extract as I thought it would be the perfect way to make my radio effective and more appealing to the audience.

Evaluation- Kind of media institution might distribute to your media product

My radio show is a local radio station which is targeting a local audience in London. This is reflected through the name I chose, Enfield Pop FM, and through other elements such as the news stories that are situated in London.

My radio show is with Adam and Jake in the afternoon which is on air from 3pm to late during the whole week. I created my own completely unique station rather than simply create a show for an existing radio station. Enfield Pop FM is similar to stations such as Pirate FM in terms of the kind of contemporary  music that it plays, the age, gender of its target audience and the types of news stories it includes in its bulletins from localisation. Enfield Pop FM just services the local area of Enfield.





This is a local radio station but as it broadcasts to the London area, the news stories are mixture of ones that would directly appeal to listeners living in and around London, but also national stories that may affect people living in the region such as the music news. Pirate FM often features a mix of specifically local stories and national stories.

Pirate FM is one of the Independent Local Radio stations for Cornwall, playing a range of music  to the present day. The station is based at the UKRD Group headquarters in Redruth. Pirate FM produces local news bulletins from its Redruth studios between 6am and 6pm on weekdays and at weekends and bank holidays.

The format of my radio station is a contemporary pop  radio station, with news, music, and advertisements. Most of the content, such as the example I have included below, target the local London area, such as the outside broadcast at the football stadium, the jingles that repeatedly reference London and most of the stories in the news bulletin that make reference to London and Enfield.



I have included adverts because my station is a commercial radio station, similar to Pirate FM that also target listeners from London. This particular radio station feature adverts which help the company to grow.

Evaluation- Media Product represents particular social groups

One part of my research and planning was to think carefully about representation while listening to existing radio shows. A lot of my listening focused on the representation of voices in the news, show presenters and as well in adverts, and thinking about how these representations would appeal to the audience.

Analysis of Representation

When scripting my preliminary task, I did not think mainly on the type of actors who were suitable, however, when creating my radio, I had to choose the people carefully on whom they will be acting as. After completing a number of listening tasks where I listened to news presenters, show presenters, voxpops and adverts, I had to make sure that they had the right kind of voice for the representation that I wanted. When my actors were recording I had to be careful on what they say and the tone of voice being used. I tried to use a variety of people who were available and willing to be part of my radio. Below are the links to my posts on choosing actors.

Choosing voices for my radio

For one of my news stories I had a football manager commentating on how the match was successful. I asked the actor to put on a Scottish accent  as I thought that this would sound more convincing to a football manager. The actor playing the manager was the same actor who was the radio presenter (Jon), so I needed to disguise his voice as he spoke as the radio presenter in a deep voice, and I did not want to make it the same voice while the news was playing. I turned down the treble and bass to represent the effect of him speaking through a microphone.



I also asked Aaron, who played two parts (the radio presenter and correspondent for my football news ), to put on different voices for each role. He did an exciting voice for the radio presenter and I asked him to speak like a old  reporter for the football news story outside broadcast.



I wanted to represent the fact that my audience is for both genders so I included both a male and female voice for one of my advertisements. The female voice sounds younger and the male younger as well, to reflect the age range of my radio station because young people normally drink and drive.

    Script for car accident advert

Due to my radio station being targeted at younger people of both genders, I decided a female should do my station and news jingle. I chose this because the female voice sounds younger and would make my radio station be gender equality.



The clip below is of Rahul as the voiceover in my restaurant advert - I wanted the voiceover to sound deep but also caring, as the intention of the advert is to encourage listeners to be relaxed and hear what the restaurant has to offer. The first time Rahul recorded it, it was far too deep and fast paced, with many words which the audience would not recognise due to pronunciation, so I asked Rahul to re-record and this time it was successful.

Script for Restaurant advert

Evaluation - Using Conventions of Real Media Products - News

The key part of my radio station show is the news bulletin. I did lots of research into the 5Ws, news values and the ways that news is presented online, in newspapers and on the radio. I went on the BBC News website and finding articles while analysing them. Therefore, I did this because I wanted to get a hint/idea on what news story layout should look like and how I can make my radio news stories more original.

The 5W's

News Values

After researching about the 5W's and news values, I analysed a number of news stories online for both local and national news to see the similarities and differences. I did this because my radio station is going to be in a local area, so I wanted to know the type of news stories which would appear. Below is one of the links to my news story which I analysed.

Politics National News

Politics Local News

National and Local News- Conclusion

The next thing which I did was that I had to listen to a number of news bulletins on different radio stations being both local and national, to see if the news stories changed depending on the type of genre and the target audience. This helped me when scripting my own stories and deciding what order the stories should appear in. Below is the links to some radio stations I have analysed.

Capital FM news

BBC Radio Gloucestershire news

Conventions found in News

In addition to this, I made a list of all of the conventions that I found in radio news bulletins so that I could use conventions such as voxpops, correspondents, outside broadcasts, soundbites and interviews with experts in my own radio news bulletin. Below are examples of each one of these conventions used in my extract.

Voxpops and other conventions

Here is my complete news bulletin after fixing the voices, adding the effects and cleaning it up. As you can hear it includes all of the elements that I noticed when researching existing news bulletins from real radio stations.

Evaluation - Using Conventions of Real Media Products - Adverts

I listened to many adverts on different radio stations, by going on the Radioville website, so that I can make my show sound as genuine as possible.  I also found that the types of products advertised reflect the target audience of radio station. I tried to add allot of the conventions that I found while researching, into my adverts on my final radio station. Before hand, I thought I didn't need to include adverts but I then realised that  they would be a good way to appeal to my particular audience, and while doing this I listen to some radio stations and notice how frequently it is being used.

Analysis of radio adverts

Potential products to be advertised

I chose one of my adverts to be a restaurant advertisement, which I thought would be totally appropriate for my local audience because they are at the age range of 18-35 and I thought they would like to try a variety of foods with friends or relatives, so I chose to create this advertisement. This is suitable for my local radio station as this restaurant is in the local area of my radio show. The clip below features one of my radio adverts which I have created.


My second advert has a narrative - for my awareness advert, I created different scenarios of two drunk friends who are driving in a car. Examples of the scenarios include the car driving fast, the two people talking, the car crashing and so on. This emphasised how my awareness advert can help people understand that being drunk and driving is breaking the law and how you can end your life. Below is the finished version of my awareness advert, including conventions that I heard such as voiceover (which is in a deep voice), sound effects used to re-create car noises and different characters.

After analysing adverts from different radio stations, it made me realise that adverts were a key convention of radio. I also noticed that they often appear just before or just after the news bulletins that I listened to, so hence I felt that I had to include them if I wanted my radio extract to sound realistic. Creating adverts also gave me the opportunity to work with a wide range of sound effects, planning on the script, music and other effects that make the adverts sound more original, and enabled me to truly show of my knowledge of existing radio.