Radio:life hacks

Radio: Life Hacks

Our first CSP for radio is the BBC Radio 1 show Life Hacks.

Our key concepts for Radio are industries and audience so these are the contexts we need to consider when studying the texts.

Previously on: The Surgery

Before being merged into Life Hacks, The Surgery was an evening radio show on BBC Radio 1 that ran between 1999 and 2017. Most recently, it was on every Wednesday at 9pm and ran for 60 minutes. It featured presenter Katie Thistleton and advice from Dr Radha Modgil.

It worked like an agony aunt column in old teenage magazines and took on controversial subjects such as gender identity, sexuality, relationships and mental health. It featured texts and calls from listeners and the post-watershed slot meant adult topics could be discussed.

The Surgery > Life Hacks

In November 2017, The Surgery was merged into a new Sunday afternoon show called Life Hacks that runs between 4pm – 6pm presented by Cel Spellman and Katie Thistleton. This mostly plays music but offers advice segments with Dr Modgil covering similar topics to The Surgery.

Although both The Surgery and Life Hacks ran in scheduled broadcast slots, in recent years the programme has been available as a podcast and encourages digital consumption and interaction. 

The Surgery

 

Life Hacks: Stormzy interview

 

Life Hacks: debt advice feature on BBC Sounds

Listen to this debt advice feature on BBC Sounds.

BBC Radio 1: History

BBC Radio 1 launched in 1967 playing pop music and using jingles in the style of American radio. It was a significant change from previous BBC content and was hugely popular in the 1970s and 1980s (some shows had 10m+ listeners). 

It became available on DAB digital radio in 1995 but not promoted until digital radios were more popular in 2002. It is available via digital TV and online via BBC Sounds.

Radio 1 is famous for events as well as radio – summer Roadshows, Big Weekends and the annual Teen Awards. 

Industries: Radio in decline

Although the BBC still boasts impressive audience figures for BBC Radio 2 and 4, it has struggled to attract young listeners to BBC Radio 1 in recent years.

Since 2010 listeners have declined – and although BBC R1 targets 15-29 year olds the average listener in 2017 was aged 30. Radio 1 is increasingly focusing on digital and social media with 16m weekly YouTube views reached in 2018.

BBC Radio 1 - Life Hacks: Blog tasks

Analysis

Listen to the extracts from Life Hacks above and answer the following questions:

1) What do the titles The Surgery and Life Hacks suggest?

They suggest how this can help someone to change their life.

2) How are the programmes constructed to appeal to a youth audience?

They. use celebrities like stormy which are well known to the youth.

3) What does the choice of presenters (Cel Spellman and Katie Thistleton) and Dr Modgil suggest about the BBC’s approach to diversity and representation?

it shows how they use two cultures and show they are trying to do something different to other radio stations.

4) Go to the Life Hacks iPlayer page and analyse the content. What does this suggest regarding the Life Hacks audience and what the BBC is hoping to achieve with the programme?

This suggest that life hacks is something which can help people in help in order to get an advise and relate to something which they are feeling.

5) Go to the Life Hacks podcast episodes page. Listen to a few episodes of the podcast and explain how the topics may a) appeal to a youth audience and b) help fulfil the BBC's responsibilities as a public service broadcaster. 

They may appeal to youth audience because they are very much based on them about their health,ethinicty and identify.BBC mission statement fits very well of inform,educate and entertain the youth by telling them about the problems.

Audience

1) What is the target audience for BBC Radio 1?

15-29

2) Who is the actual audience for BBC Radio 1?

40-45

3) What audience pleasures are offered by Life Hacks? Apply Blumler and Katz’s Uses and Gratifications theory.

personal identity. can be applied by people are reacting to the situations.surviallance can be linked as people are learning about this things.

4) Read this Guardian review of Life Hacks. What points does the reviewer make about Life Hacks and the particular podcast episode they listened to?

she listened to the podcasts and believes that she can relate a lot to them.

5) Read this NME feature on Radio 1 listener figures. What are the key statistics to take from this article regarding the decline in Radio 1 audience ratings?

has lost 200,000 weekly listeners since May
9.2 Bbc Llisteners

Industries

1) How does Life Hacks meet the BBC mission statement to Educate, Inform and Entertain? 

They link with this mission statement as they talk about issues which people might not know about but in a very fun and intellectual way for example showing stormy and his scholarship.

2) Read the first five pages of this Ofcom document laying out its regulation of the BBC. Pick out three key points in the summary section.

1. The BBC is the UK’s most widely-used media organisation, providing programming on television and radio and content online. The public has exceptionally high expectations of the BBC, shaped by its role as a publicly-funded broadcaster with a remit to inform, educate and entertain the public, and to support the creative economy across the UK.
2. 1.2  To meet these expectations, the BBC must deliver the mission and public purposes set out in its new Royal Charter (the Charter). For the first time, the BBC will be robustly held to account for doing so by an independent, external regulator. Alongside responsibilities for programme standards and protecting fair and effective competition in the areas in whichthe BBC operates, the Charter gives Ofcom the job of setting the BBC’s operating licence(the Licence). This sets binding conditions, requiring the BBC to deliver for licence fee- payers. It is also our job to scrutinise, measure and report on the BBC’s performance.
3. 1.3  On 29 March 2017, we consulted on a draft Licence setting out requirements for the BBC to fulfil its remit, and plans for Ofcom to measure the BBC’s overall performance. We havecarefully considered more than 100 responses from members of the public and industry.We have taken account of the BBC’s interim annual plan for 2017/18, published on 3 July 2017. We have also carried out bespoke research into audience opinions and expectations of the BBC.

3) Now read what the license framework will seek to do (letters a-h). Which of these points relate to BBC Radio 1 and Life Hacks?

2. Support a wide range of valued genres
   Support social action campaigns on BBC radio
   Safeguard vulnerable genres such as arts, music and religious programm

4) What do you think are the three most important aspects in the a-h list? Why?

2. Support a wide range of valued genres
   Support social action campaigns on BBC radio
   Safeguard vulnerable genres such as arts, music and religious programm

5) Read point 1.9: What do Ofcom plan to review in terms of diversity and audience? 

They plan to examine diversity in one of their BBC programming.

Read this Guardian interview with BBC 1 Controller Ben Cooper.

6) What is Ben Cooper trying to do with Radio 1?

he wants to make it like Netflix and amazon prime for the youth to watch it.

7) How does he argue that Radio 1 is doing better with younger audiences than the statistics suggest?

by showing how most of the shows. are focusing on topics which a younger audiences are facing today in the current world.

8) Why does he suggest Radio 1 is distinctive from commercial radio?

They will be playing about 4000 tracks.

9) Why is Radio 1 increasingly focusing on YouTube views and digital platforms?

This. is because nowadays the younger audiences only watch things in the digital audience which means they need to get into that to read h out to them.

10) In your opinion, should the BBC’s remit include targeting young audiences via Radio 1 or should this content be left to commercial broadcasters? Explain your answer.

They should be targeting younger audiences because they are showing how important  young People are now in. the modern society and attract them will help them to make a connection with them for a long time.

BFI

2) Write a one-sentence summary of the ideas of the theorists Matthew Daintrey-Hall covered (you can use your notes from task 1 here if relevant):

bell hooks:"Gender becomes a set of connotations that have become naturalized." Gender roles are constructed, men and women are victimised from a patriarchal society.  bell hooks believes that traditionally masculine attitudes and behaviours aren't natural but rather constructed by a patriarchal society.

Liesbet van Zoonen:in patriarchal society in 1960's women are being objectified by the new media and constructed in a way to show their body.

Judith Butler: gender is perfomance and we are contrscted in a way of doing things as man and female.

Saussure:society is an institution which makes all the decisions.

Barthes:enigma codes controls how much we know/mysteryand actions codes which is the important parts of the narrative.

Stuart Hall:reception theory. of dominant and oppositional which is dominant what the writings intends to show and oppositional will be against the view point of the writer.


Baudrillard:Baudrillard states “Hyperreality – a condition in which ‘reality’ has been replaced by simulacra.” ◦ Simulacra – when a sign loses its relation to reality, it begins to simulate a simulation (the process in which a representation of something comes to replace the thing which is actually being represented.

3) Choose one of the films we saw extracts from and watch the whole movie: Captain Fantastic (2016), Pulp Fiction (1994) or Inception (2010). Write a 300 word analysis of your chosen film using theories from the study day (use the exam paragraph structure we were shown on the day - theory introduction, examples from text, why this 'proves' or 'disproves' the theory).

film and TV learning response

1) Type up your feedback in full (you don't need to write the mark and grade if you want to keep this confidential).

www-some good knowledge of thee CSP's especialy question 3 
ebi-more understandig of key theories(postmodernisim)

2) Read the whole mark scheme for this assessment carefully. Identify at least one potential point that you missed out on for each question in the assessment (even if you got full marks for the question).

Question 1

The poster arguably provides a good example of pastiche: media products that imitate the
style of another text, artist or time period. Although an argument can be made that
Kingsman: The Secret Service is a parody (there are definitely suggestions of comedy) the
poster as a whole asks to be taken seriously. In a parody, audiences would likely expect a
tagline that confirms the comic nature of the film. The only text appearing here is: ‘From the
director of X Men: First Class’ which would suggest the film is trying to attract an audience

looking for serious, action/superhero-based entertainment.

question 2 

The distribution and promotion was not that effective as it took them  two years to come to cinema and it only take them in 11 days to shoot it.

question 3 

Capital has been accused of left-wing bias for negative representation of wealth/upper
middle class white British people and positive representation of multiculturalism and illegal

immigrants.

The postmodern visual aesthetic draws on pastiche, using exaggerated popular culture
references and stylised mise-en-scene. Therefore representations do not reflect the genuine

social and cultural context but a nostalgic view of 1980s culture.

3) The first question demanded a response using postmodern terminology. Write a definition here of the three main terms:

Bricolage: this is when you use old and new texts like images and narrative to make something incompletely new.

Pastiche: when you use/imitate another text but are using inspiration frm it instead of mocking it.

Intertextuality:when one text is referred to another text.

4) The second question was on the film industry. Write down two points from the mark scheme about Chicken's promotion and distribution that you didn't include in your answer. 

Promotion of Chicken was through a combination of traditional marketing methods (trailer,
film poster with review quotes, interviews and reviews such as Mark Kermode’s review on
the BBC) and new/digital media.

Small cinema release in arthouse cinemas appropriate distribution for the film – a British
social realist drama. Similarly, Film4 was a good home for TV premiere in April 2017. It was
also selected for the curated film subscription service MUBI aimed at more discerning,
educated film fans.

5) Look over your mark, teacher comments and the mark scheme for Question 3 - the 25 mark essay question on your TV Close-Study Products. Write a complete essay plan for this question based on the suggested answers in the mark scheme. You can either use something similar to your actual answer or alternatively start from scratch. Make sure it is an extensive, detailed plan focused on the question (representations; social and cultural contexts of production) and offering specific references to Capital and Deutschland 83 for each section. Try and cover the two texts equally if you can and aim to plan around 5-6 paragraphs in total.

introduction-share my opinion and show the basis understanding of the csp's.

capital-introduce the text 

Deutschland- introduce the text#

talk about the mise en scene and reflect the time period to show the cultural and historical differences.

a paragraph of showing how they focus on other elements than cultural and historical.

conclusion- give my opinion

Introduction to radio

Radio CSPS

War of the Worlds – Columbia Broadcasting Company (1938)

Life Hacks – BBC Radio 1 (2017-)

These are targeted CSPs and need to be studied with reference to two elements of the Theoretical Framework (Audiences and Industries) and all relevant contexts. 

Example exam questions

Briefly define public service broadcasting (PSB) [2 marks]

To what extent is War of the Worlds a historically significant media product? [20 marks]

Identify two strategies or techniques used by Radio 1 to attract a youth audience. Explain the reason for each. [4 marks]

Explain how regulatory contexts shape the output of media industries. You should refer to your radio Close Study Product, Life Hacks. [9 marks]

Key question: Is radio still relevant in the digital age?

How does radio respond to the digital media landscape we now find ourselves in. Will younger audiences listen to the radio? Does it have influence? Are podcasts the future for younger listeners?


BBC Sounds

BBC Sounds is a new app designed to bring younger listeners to BBC Radio content. It aims to fulfil its requirements as a public service broadcaster while also responding to the demands of the digital media landscape.

 


The ShoutOut Network

The Shoutout Network is a London-based network of diverse podcasts designed to give a platform for BAME voices. It demonstrates the rise of independent media producers in the 21st century media landscape. The representation of minority voices also arguably provides an element of public service broadcasting.

Read this Guardian feature on the launch of BBC Sounds and answer the following questions:

1) Why does the article suggest that ‘on the face of it, BBC Radio is in rude health’?

This is because people are not listening to radio anymore as the new digital media has taken over radio.

2) What percentage of under-35s use the BBC iPlayer catch-up radio app?

3% of under people 35 use the BBC player.

3%3) What is BBC Sounds?

a new app that streams music ,live catch ups and podcasts.

4) How do audiences listen to radio content in the digital age?

5) What does Jason Phipps suggest is important for radio and podcast content aimed at younger audiences?

the personal problems whcih they can relate to for the future.

6) Why does the BBC need to stay relevant?

this is because they are very relevant and valued as they are paid by the license fee.

Now read this review of the BBC Sounds app.

7) What content does the BBC Sounds app offer?

anything for audio and allows you to download the music.

8) How does it link to BBC Radio?

as you can click to through and listen to the bbc radio by the app.

9) What are the criticisms of the BBC Sounds app?

it doesn't have enough content.

10) Two new podcasts were launched alongside the BBC Sounds app. What are they and why might they appeal to younger audiences?

end of days and beyond today which focuses on socio economic factor.

ShoutOut Network

Read this Huffington Post feature on the Shout Out Network and answer the following questions:

1) What is the ShoutOut Network?

it is growing podcast network which was launched in 2015 and focuses on socio-political factors.

2) What podcasts are offered by the ShoutOut Network?

podcasts like melanin millenals which focus on socio-political factor.

3) What audience do they reach?

20,000 listener every month.

4) What are the 2015 statistics on podcast listening in the UK?

• 3.7 million adults listen to podcasts - this is equal to 6.5% of the adult population
• 57% listen to podcasts on their phones
• 47% listen while commuting
• 34% listen while relaxing
• 
  

5) The article suggests podcasts are ‘picking up more steam’. Do you think podcasts the future of radio?

In my opinion it depends on what topic they are focusing on and if the topics are interesting then they are going to be doing well for the future.

music video index

1) Music Video - introduction and factsheet questions
2) Music Video theory and This Is America analysis
3) Common - Letter to the Free context and analysis
4) Michael Jackson - Billie Jean context, analysis and MM article

michael jackson billie jean

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean blog tasks

Work through the following tasks to create a comprehensive case study for Michael Jackson's Billie Jean music video.

Media Magazine reading: Billie Jean, birth of an icon

Go to our Media Magazine archive and read the case study on Billie Jean - birth of an icon (MM62 - page 20). Answer the following questions:

1) What was the budget for Billie Jean? How did this compare with later Michael Jackson videos?
The budget for the video was $50,000, not small, but as it turned out not big enough to accommodate Jackson’s idea that mannequins in a shop window.whereas his other music videos were very massive like thriller.

2) Why was the video rejected by MTV?

The video was rejected by MTV because mtv  thought  it didn’t suit their ‘middle America’ audience.

3) Applying Goodwin's theory of music video, how does Billie Jean reflect the genre characteristics of pop music video?

The video contains many conventions of the pop genre: lip- synching, performance interwoven with narrative, dance routines, high-fashion costume. Regarding Goodwin's theory of music video, Billie Jean includes many of this theories conventions such as:

•  relationship between lyrics and visuals 
•  links between audio and visuals 
•  star construction  performance 
• the notion of looking.

4) How do the visuals reflect the lyrics in Billie Jean?

The visuals reflect the lyrics because they go with the story of how papparazi has affected big celebrities to do their things.

5) Why does the video feature fewer close-up shots than in most pop videos?

They want to be different and show michel jacksons's dancing skills in this musci video.

6) What intertextual references can be found in the video?

film noir is a intertexuatlity which can link to this video.

7) How does the video use the notion of looking as a recurring motif?

This is because at the start we see the detective looking at him and trying to capture him in the cameras then the polarid cameras are also trying to focus on him.

8) What representations can be found in the video?

representation of michael jackson and celebrities being affected by the papparazi.
Close-textual analysis of the music video

1) How is mise-en-scene used to create intertextuality - reference to other media products or genres? E.g. colour/black and white; light/lighting.

Mise en scene is used to create intertexuality to the noir genre - this is created through the use of black and white and loads of low key lighting. The crime/mystery genre is created through the use of the music video's narrative including a detective and Michael who is being searched but manages to escape each time. 

2) How does the video use narrative theory of equilibrium?

equlibrium michael jackson getting away from being arrested

disequilibrium the detective following michale jackson and how michael is trying to stay away from him.

3) How are characters used to create narrative through binary opposition?

michael jackson is shown as a rich man and he sees poor people in the tsreet which need help.

poor and rich

4) What is the significance of the freeze-frames and split-screen visual effects?

This is to make it seem interesting for the audience by making it seem like someoene is laways watching michael jackson.

5) What meanings could the recurring motif of 'pictures-within-pictures' create for the audience?

These are visual effects which make it seem like it is a newspaper.

6) Does the video reinforce or subvert theories of race and ethnicity - such as Gilroy's diaspora or Hall's black characterisations in American media?

billy jean shows gilroy disapor theory's black theory of the clown which si is to entertain the poeple which he is doing by dancing.

7) Does this video reflect Steve Neale's genre theory of 'repetition and difference'? Does it reflect other music videos or does it innovate?

The performance element is the repetition and the freeze frames are seen as the difference.

 8) Analyse the video using postmodern theory (e.g. Baudrillard's hyper-reality; Strinati's five definitions of postmodernism). How does the 'picture-in-picture' recurring motif create a postmodern reading?

The 'picture in picture' recurring motif can be interpreted as a postmodern reading as it can be seen as reinforcing the idea that the distinction between media and reality has collapsed, and we now live in a 'reality' defined by images and representations. Images refer to each other and represent each other as reality rather than some 'pure' reality that exists before the image represents it - this is the state of hyper reality.