Ideal Listener Profile

This is Kate, a sixteen year old from the Isle of Wight. Kate listens to the radio on average four times a week. She usually listens to the radio when she’s in the car with her family or boyfriend via the car’s FM Radio, however she also listens sometimes on bus journeys or when she’s on the train via her pre downloaded apps for specific radio stations as accessing stations via the internet on her phone via 3G or 4G is expensive and far more complicated. Occasionally she will listen to the radio when it is quiet at work on the weekends. Kate listens to local and regional stations, rather than national stations, as she finds the content more relevant and interesting to her. Kate doesn’t care or have a preference of radio news bulletin genders, as long as they speak clearly and are easy to understand. Kate also prefers them speaking at a normal speed, rather than a faster pace than normal like some national stations do, as she wants to ensure the news she is listening to makes sense to her. She doesn’t mind the news reader having a specific accent either, as long as it isn’t incredibly outrageous such as strong American or Australian accents, as she is listening to British stations. She prefers it when news readers vary their vocal tone and the emotion with which they read stories, dependent upon their content, such as how serious they are and whether it is a positive news story. If they don’t, she will disengage from the broadcast. Kate likes listening to the news programmes in the morning as they catch her up on the news in her area that she might’ve missed otherwise. Kate loves entertainment, such as TV, films and going to festivals with her friends, as she loves following and being a fan of new bands. She also likes to know the weather, regardless of what time she listens to the station, as it helps decide her outfit that she’ll wear, what transport she will take and if she needs to take an umbrella to make sure her hair doesn’t get soaking wet! Kate hates political and economic news as she normally finds it isn’t relatable to her area or to young people either – it’s boring too! She doesn’t mind listening to short sport news stories, however if there is more than one in a broadcast, she will stop listening to it, as it doesn’t interest her at all.  Kate likes radio news as it tends to be less effort than reading the local paper and also usually condenses stories to only the vital and important information which is great as Kate is normally quite busy. She likes being able to hear what’s happening in her local area, as she wants to know if anything is happening that could directly impact upon her. Kate also loves radio news, as they tend to get the inside gossip and first news about bands, celebrities and music acts before it is broadcast on TV or mentioned on social media as news bulletins are very regular. She also likes knowing the information is legitimate, rather than it being questionable like on social media sites. However, she doesn’t like it when news bulletins repeat stories or have too similar stories in the same bulletin. She loves a variety of hard and soft news, however prefers to hear the main hard news at the start of the bulletins, so that she is clear what’s important in her area. She likes personalised stories, when there is outside broadcasts from people related to the story as she thinks it makes the story more rounded and also more detailed.