About Shannon Brown

BA (Hons) Journalism

Session 3: Re-run

For this week, our task was, essentially, the same as last week: create a radio show aimed at a specific target audience.

I might have suggested children as our audience, without specifying age group or gender, which was probably what threw the task off slightly.

Due to personal issues, I hadn’t brought anything for the session – I didn’t have a chance to create anything – so I filled in for a missing person on they day, and ended up writing and presenting the news.

This wasn’t aimed at children, but instead aimed at parents listening to the show with their kids; many families listen to the radio together in the car.

I think this worked, because it was designed to give the parents something to focus their attention, before the show that really wasn’t for them.

I wrote the news the morning of the show, so we would be broadcasting relevant events, and because I wasn’t aware I’d be doing it till then, and scripted out what I would say. Then, during the main body of the show, I looked for, and scripted, a new section of news, to add a bit of variety.

The first reading went well, and I don’t think I stumbled over any words when reading it out, but I know I did in the second one. However, I think that was because that was my first time talking live on radio, and I was very nervous. With practise, I think I’ll do a better job, and my voice will hopefully sound less shaky as well!

To go back to our audience – because we didn’t specify and age group and just said “children,” there were some differences in the style of the packages people in the group made. Some were made for very young children, but some were about school and option for after school.

To improve, I think we will select an age group and, possibly, a hobby, or interest of the intended audience, so we have a more focused radio show. I think we will also need to pay more attention to the order of the packages – we started with one about films because it was the most ‘news’ based.

While I think this is a good structure for most shows, I don’t think it worked with ours, because we were aiming it at children – I think we should have started with a more exciting package to attract the listeners attention, as well as ending on an exciting one as well, so they have something they know they’ll want to listen to.

This would work best with a preview, or a ‘coming up on…’ section, so I think we should also include on of those next time.

Overall, I think the show was a big improvment on the previous weeks show, which was the main focus, really.

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