My Visit to IOW Radio

My media studies class and I visited our local radio station Isle of Wight Radio. We visited and met the News Editor who showed us round the various studios and then we discussed what is considered 'News' in their station. We looked at the software they use to edit their news scripts and it shocked me to see that they pay a certain fee in order to receive stories from Sky's national news centre. Therefore they have a mixture of national and local news stories in their broadcasts. Here is a photo of us in Studio 3 where we listened to the News being read live in the studio next door:

This day was very beneficial as it highlighted to me what is considered news in a local radio station environment and also, technically how news bulletins are constructed, read, edited and finally how the general station works. The broadcasting technology was incredibly interesting!

Rules for Writing Radio

Rule 1: Write as if you're talking to a friend – use contractions, (e.g. don't, can't, shouldn't).

Rule 2: Follow and include the 6W’S:

Who – is involved?

What – has happened/is happening?

Where – did it happen/is it happening?

When – did it happen/is it happening?

Why – has it happened/is it happening?

(How) – has it happening/is it happening?

Rule 3: KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Simple sentences- one idea, one sentence.

Avoid using commas!

Rule 4: Sentences:

Two or three sentences for a cue;

Four for a copy story.

Rule 5: Write numbers as words, e.g, 2010 becomes ‘two thousand and ten’ or ‘twenty ten’.

This makes it clearer for the news reader to read.

Rule 6: Joe Bloggs, 17, from Newport.

This doesn't make sense when you read it aloud so it is changed to:

Seventeen-year-old Joe Bloggs from Newport...

or:

Joe Bloggs - who's seventeen and from Newport…

Rule 7: When writing a cue, make sure you don’t repeat what is said in the clip! Paraphrase the first line of audio or sum up what is going to be said.

Rule 8: Write names of people or places phonetically (if they aren’t said how they are spelt).

E.g, Sarah Leahy (PRON Sare-rah Lee-hee).

Rule 9:  Round up statistics and put them in context. E.g.260,000 hectares = the size of three football pitches.

It is easier to understand and paints a picture in the mind of the audience.

Rule 10: Don't use ‘today’ in your top line of the story!

The audience should assume events are taking place ‘today’ – otherwise, why are you telling them about it today?!

You can use ‘this morning’ or ‘this afternoon’ though to be more specific if necessary.

Rule 11: Don’t use quotations from people in the newsreader’s script.

The only ‘quotes’ we should hear are from the person themselves.

An exception to this might be using one or two words in the top line of a cue – if we’re then going to hear from that person themselves as a clip.

Rule 12: Avoid abbreviations unless they’re very common/well-known.

E.g. NATO or the UN would be fine as they are commonplace.

Rule 13: READ IT ALOUD to ensure it reads correctly! Sometimes words look fine written down but read aloud, they don’t make sense or might be an awkward tongue twister or an unintentional rhyme!

In order to practice these rules, I looked at a recent article in my local newspaper, the County Press and re-wrote the story into a radio script, utlising the rules and skills I've learnt:

Here is my Copy Story Script:

• Ventnor Winter Gardens has offered its venue free of charge to Isle of Arts festival organisers. It’s an attempt to rescue the popular island arts based festival which has been losing money since its launch in twenty-ten. The proposal from the Winter Gardens is worth around five-thousand pounds and it’s hoped it will encourage other sponsors to come forward to support the festival.

Here is my Cue and Voicer Script:

• Cue: Ventnor Winter Gardens has offered its venue free of charge to Isle of Arts festival organisers. It’s an attempt to rescue the popular island arts based festival which has been losing money since its launch in 2010. Joint Organiser of the festival Janneke Oxley (Pro: JAN-ECK-A) is grateful for the donation but is unsure if it is enough to rescue the festival for 2016,
  
  
  Clip: ‘By itself, it will not be enough to cover reduced sponsorship elsewhere and the fact we have sod our hotel which we used to accommodate performers. We would also need to have started booking acts two months ago for next May.’

What Makes Something News?

This is my research of what makes something news, in the audio file embedded below. It includes what makes something news, what news is, Galtung and Ruge's news values and their importance and impartiality:

Radio News Bulletin Analysis

Also, in order to show my understanding of these conventions and what they sound like, I have analysed in depth a variety of different UK Radio stations' news bulletins. Doing this task enabled me to realise many things, such as the difference of national bulletin to a local bulletin.

The first is from Isle of Wight Radio, from a news bulletin that aired in July 2015. It is one of the on the hour news bulletins that the station delivered. I decided this bulletin would be appropriate to analyse as I myself will be creating a local news bulletin, such as what this station provides. Therefore, it meant that I could see how these conventions were utilised in a local bulletin, rather than on a national bulletin, in order to make my final task as accurate to a local radio news bulletin as possible:

What can you hear?	Content	Additional Notes
Jingle	General IOW Radio Jingle, not news specific. Fast with a strong background beat, focusing on the locations the station reaches	Generic Male Voice with clear diction
Intro	Greeting of good morning, time-check, name of presenter	Female voice with Southern accent. Clear diction with a formal and serious tone.
Story 1 – Historic Child Sex Abuse	Cue and Voicer – Cue of presenter giving status of the enquiry, followed by Voicer from male reporter at Sky for more information.	Voicer has male voice with serious tone. Evident background noises, highlighting his location of being outside the court in order to create dramatic atmosphere within the voicer.
Story 2 – Budget Cuts	Cue and Clip – Clip featuring George Osbone who is voicing his justifications for making the cuts	Clip has Osborune using very formal language, giving him to right to reply to the story. He uses many facts and statistics and there is also again background sound which shows the interview takibg place in a London location, for further atmosphere.
Story 3 – Primary School	Cue and Voicer – IOW Radio Reporter John Weeks adds additional information to the story through his voicer.	Giving such a plain story a voicer means that the listener will value it with more importance than on first thought.
Story 4 – Firefighters receiving extra training	Cue and Clip – Clip features chief fire fighter giving more information and reasoning to why the training is needed and what the training will be exactly.	Male voice of authority that gives the story more relevant information. Quite formal as information is important
Story 5 – Primary School Music Festival	Cue and Clip – Clip features a pupil who organised the event. Used mainly to highlight how young the organisation of the event is,  thus giving it a reason to be news	Young male voice with basic vocabularly – very casual, mentioning how happy he is to be the radio etc. Least formal story in broadcast.
Story 6 – IOW (Local festival to station) won major award	Copy – Presenter outlines what award they won.	No soundclip of them winning award, simply reporting which one, thus it’s the shortest story in broadcast
SOC	Tells the audience there’s more information and photos on news pages on the radio website. Asks audience if they find any news stories to send them to the website (which she reads out.)	Standard, no strange sound effects etc, website mentioned.

The second is from BBC Radio 1. It is one of their 'Newsbeat' bulletins which pride themselves on being incredibly concise due to the staton having a younger target audience in coparsion to most local stations. I analysed this bulletin so that I could compare the usage of conventions to that in the IOW Radio bulletin (local.)

What can you hear?	Content	Additional Notes
Jingle	Fast, with a sense of urgency through its intense beats. No mention of news.	Used to remind us of the station we’re listening to and its name.
Headline – Increase in testing of STI’s in Females	Basic outline of story that will follow in the programme.	Serious subject, therefore man has serious tone to voice with clear diction
Stab	Fast, modern beats to build up to the news story after hearing the headline, making the audience realise the importance of the story.
Story 1- Increase in testing of STI’s in Females	Cue and voicer – Voicer of reporter gives doctors and governments opinions upon story Bed – fast and urgent music	Female voice in voicer– used to make story easier to understand to as it’s from a female voice and story is about females. Continues through voicer too
Story 2- Latest soldier killed in Afghanistan	Copy – short story including just basic details	Name, date, cause of death told.
Stab	Even shorter than previous stab, but same music.
Story 3 – Missing child found	Copy – Basic information on circumstances	No stab follows this copy story whereas previously there has been a stab after a copy sotry.
Story 4 – Reminders to vote through facebook	Copy – No external opinion, pure facts
Story 5- Illegal sharing of videos and films online will be punished through new laws	Copy	New law outlined to listeners
Story 6 – Sport based, Wayne Rooney injured and out of action for important club match	Copy	Only sport based story. Mixing sport news in with normal news shows that the station limits the time dedicated to news as it knows its readers will prefer music and chat etc.
SOC	Name of programme (Newsbeat) mentioned Told time of next broadcast (3:30)	Signposting where there will be a news programme again, later in the day. Doesn’t linger on any of the stories.

The third is from BBC Radio Jersey. The BBC Local stations don't utilise the 'Newsbeat' bulletins that most of its national stations does. Therefore, I analysed this bulletin in order to see how to BBC used the conventions in a local bulletin format. It suprsied me that this bulletin was so long and incrdibly indepth!

What can you hear?	Contnet	Additional Information
Jingle	Relaxed, but classical music, not modern or bassy	No dialogue or words
Intro	Presnter introduces news and who’s reading it. Female news reader greeting (good morning)	Male voice, serious tone No time check given
Story 1 – Malaysia Airline Investigation	Cue and Voicer – Cue gives detail on the current progress made in investigation. Voicer from Kualalmupas international Airport. States how relatives are being looked after. Gives information given from the airline about plane, and highlights the pressure on airline.	Voicer -  Female Strong Audtsralian Accent. Accent slightly distracts from what she reads as it is so strong, however could be due to logistics as Singapore is closer to Australia than UK. Some words difficult to understand, but serious tone in voice highlights the horror of the tragedy and how important the enquiry is.
Story 2 – Jersey Treasury Minister setting out government spending	Cue and Wrap Cue states what story is then Voicer from Clare Peters gives information on last year’s spending, highlighting how little there Embedded in voicer is a Clip – Head of Citizens Advice bureau on what he hopes it will help to do. Voicer then gives time it will be given	NAational story mentioned but localised Local Opinion
Story 3 – Isralei Army Launched First Grand Offsenive in Gaza for 5 Years	Copy – Given background to why it happened and how many fatalities
Story 4 – New Local Law, anyone under 14 must wear a cycle helmet	Copy – States the new law and how it has been rejected before	Local law as its for a local station
Story 5- Sinking motorboat rescue	Copy – States rescue operation details
StorY 6 – Polar Bear Attack (national story) that features local boy	Cue – Coroner due to give verdict, evidence given by Jersey teenager	National story, but made local through the person involved.
Story 7 – Jersey inflation rate slowed	Copy – Facts and figures	No opinions given
Story 8 – Local naviagtation for boats technology broken	Copy – How long it will take to fix and advice to sailors	Serious tone taken when advice given
Story 9  - Parish Countsbale stepping down in Trinity	Copy
Intro	Entertainemnt news begins	Interesting  that all included in one programme, no split or specific jignle
Story 10 – Local festival Acts and Locations announced	Cue and Voicer – Ryan Morrison gives more information on ceratin events, such as film synposis’, what certain places are hosting and who is involved Back Anno – Reiterating that if you cant make it you can listen to the final event live on the station	Dates of festival given
Intro 2	Sports News, introducing Sports Presenter, name and good morning	Sports news has new presenter whereas entertainment news doesn’t.
Story 11 – Englands Cricket Udate	Copy – Update on scoring and players opnion upon not taking avdanatge of bowling first.	Quote read by presenter, no clip.
Story 12 – Rory  MCilroy latest competion	Copy – Tells of his competitors and the event details	Presnter stutters at start of story, stumbling on words, but then apologising and correcting himself. Evidence of it being a local station and live broadcast instead of pre-recorded national for example. But then returns back to serious tone after breaking and changing it to apologetic.
Story 13 – Tour de France Update	Copy – Who’s leading	Names given
SOC of Sport Bulletin	Time of next broadcast given and also, makes a joke that it’ll be ‘when I’ll be able to talk again’	Formal reminder, then followed by a joke and so, a change in the males voice, to a sarcastic tone.
SOC of News	Presnter thanks Sport Presenter then gives a time check	Female remains formal, she doesn’t react to joke, perhaps due to the strict time constraint of this broadcast.

The final analysis is of Absolute Radio's news bulletin. This bulletin is from a national station and is of normal length for a news bulletin however it only focusses on a few stories. I wanted to analyse this specfic bulletin as it still manages to use many conventions:

Jingle	Name of station, not news specific, slow, relaxed jingle, with ‘we’ being used to show the relationship the radio staton wants with audience, they want them to feel relaxed and included in the station
Intro	Incredibly Short! Only states her name	No breath taken between introduction and first story,  so difficult to realise when news is starting. No time check, so could confuse listener.
Story 1 – 4 Moths before England begin World Cup Capgin,  Capello resigned as manager	Cue and England former captain opinion  given via phone call Presenter states when more details will be given Introduces writer of daily Mirror who gives his opinion again via phone call, Harry rednappe obvious succeser, talking about how he has helped Tottenham Presetner states how redkanppe is bookies favourite
Story 2 – Tax eVASON	Linked to Story 1, no break inbetween., but only a copy story.	Detasils of how he took untaxed bonsues
Story 3 – Steve Coogan and Paul Gascogine settling for compensation for phone hacking	Copy – Amounts of compensation given
Story 4 – Weather update	No jingle or different presenter National forecast and lowest temperature	Again, very different to differnciate that it’s a different segment of news, even the sponsor is read in the presenters same, serious tone
SOC - Jingle (Weather)	Weather knigle used to end programme, sponsor mentioned	Completely different voice, a happier, more lively female with added effects