BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat: Blog tasks

Newsbeat analysis

Use BBC Sounds to listen to Radio 1. Select a Newsbeat bulletin (8am or 12.45pm are good options) and then answer the following questions: 

1) What news stories were featured in the bulletin you listened to?

The Kings Speech

Rickie, Melvin and Charlie

2) How does Newsbeat appeal to a youth audience?

Each story is covered in a more personal and captivating style with fast-paced songs and background music.

3) How might Newsbeat help fulfil the BBC's responsibilities as a public service broadcaster? 

Newsbeat its role to inform, educate, and amuse the public by providing its youthful target audience with entertainment together with up-to-date news articles.

Media Factsheet #246: BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat

Read Factsheet #246 BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat. You'll need your Greenford google login to access it. Answer the following questions:

1) How is the history and launch of Radio 1 summarised in the factsheet? If you studied this as part of GCSE Media you will already know much of this.

Newsbeat started in 1973 but to understand this CSP you need to know a bit of history around Radio 1, the home of Newsbeat. For many years BBC radio had a monopoly of the airwaves, it was the only radio station that people in the UK could legally listen to. However, this monopoly was challenged in the 1960s when pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg started illegally transmitting commercial programming via ships in international waters and on land.

2) Look at page 3 of the factsheet. How is Radio 1 attempting to appeal to its 15-29 age demographic? 

It aims to entertain and engage young listeners with a distinctive mix of contemporary music and speech. The programmes showcase a wide range of new music styles and support emerging artists, in particular those from the UK;with at least 60 hours a week dedicated to specialist musicprogramming. News, documentaries and other speech content focuses on areas of relevance to young adults in the UK today and aims to help them make sense of the world around them. BBC Radio 1Xtra is Radio 1’s digital ‘sister’ station, shares some programmes and a similar passion for new music. The station has a particular focus on serving BAME (British English, Black, Asian and minority ethnic) communities, offering its young listeners programmes that span RnB, hip-hop, dancehall, drum & bass, and a range of other urban music genres. They also broadcast weekly documentaries under the ‘Radio 1 & 1Xtra’s Stories.’

3) What did young people used to get from radio? Focus on audience pleasures / Uses & Gratifications here (see top of second column on page 3).

• To connect themselves to popular culture products (identity).
• To gain an insight into the world beyond their own experience: relationships, romance, politics (information and surveillance).
• To build para-social relationships with media personalities (both musicians and DJs) – create fandoms.
• For pure entertainment.
  

4) How has Radio 1 and Newsbeat in particular diversified its content for the digital age? 

There are NO advertisements.

It’s totally free.

5) How is Newsbeat constructed to appeal to audiences? 

- Multiple voices, regional and national accents; Welsh, Irish, Scottish.

- Code-switching from formal to informal is used in order to target and appeal to different demographics.

- Simplifying of language and content.

- Personalisation and anecdotes.

- Use of sound beds/effects: also known as imagining, that run underneath the voices. These are used to maintain interest throughout the broadcast.

- Recorded interviews with diegetic sound.

6) What are the three key ideas from David Hesmondhalgh and which apply to Radio 1 Newsbeat?

- Cultural Industries are made to create profit: Does not apply as the BBC is a PSB provider, free from commercial impulses. All profits go back into making more content for the people.

- Content production is made by ‘symbol creators’: Yes, the diverse output of Radio 1 and Newsbeat is huge. Creators are governed by professional guidelines but they are also free to be creative to make products to excite youth audiences.

- The internet has not challenged the centralised power of providers or allowed audiences to challenge content: Yes, Radio 1 and Newsbeat is finding it difficult to challenge the social media giants in targeting a youth audience, but it does try to utilise these platforms with its content.

7) Now look at Curran and Seaton. What are their key ideas and can they be applied to Radio 1 Newsbeat? 

• The media is concentrated in the hands of powerful commercial media giants.
• Culture is controlled by social elites.

The BBC's remit is to act in the public interest by providing impartial, high-quality, and distinctive output and services that inform, educate, and entertain all audiences. This mission is outlined in The Royal Charter, which states that the BBC must remain independent. For this reason, they cannot be applied to radio. Additionally, the government-set licencing fee provides funding for the BBC.

 

8) What key idea for Livingstone and Lunt is on the factsheet and how does it link to the CSP?

- Media can have a citizen- based approach to regulation: The BBC is an example of a citizen-based approach to regulation.

9) How can we apply Stuart Hall's Reception theory to Radio 1 Newsbeat?

Media producers encode media products in a way that they think will appeal to them. This is not always successful: The BBC tries to appeal to young people with its content, but it faces competition from other platforms that appear to be catering for them in a better, more appealing way.

10) Choose one other audience theory on the factsheet and explain how it links to Radio 1 Newsbeat.

Audiences select media products in an active way, for various reasons: Newsbeat could satisfy the need for information and surveillance. Radio 1 has many aspects of entertainment.

Industry contexts: reading and research

Read the first five pages of this Ofcom document laying out its regulation of the BBC. 

1) Pick out three key points in the 'Summary' section.

• 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.
• 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 which the BBC operates, the Charter gives Ofcom the job of setting the BBC’s operating licence (the Licence). 

2) Now read what the license framework will seek to do (letters a-h). Which of these points could we relate to BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat?

Require the BBC to reflect the full diversity of the UK population.

Strengthen news and current affairs rules.

Support a wide range of valued genres.

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

• Secure a more distinctive BBC; this is important because it allows the BBC to be more innovative and creative so it will be able to survive in the current climate of technologie.

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

As part of our analysis we plan to examine the on-screen diversity of the BBC’s programming, including in its popular peak time shows. The review will ask what audiences expect from the BBC to understand whether it reflects and portrays the lives of all people across the whole of the UK, ranging from younger and older audiences to diverse communities.

5) Based on your reading and research, do you think BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat offers licence fee payers good value for money?

Absolutly not. In todays age information is expected to be free. ALso a lot of information we get is through social media which again is free, entertaining and easily accessible from anywhere.