What I have learnt... Listening

Too make good radio, you have to listen to radio. This is to help you see what shows do well and why and which shows do badly and why. You can then emulate the good points, and avoid the bad ones.

Here is what I have learnt, and how we used that knowledge in our show.

Production is Key

However exciting your voice is, it needs some help. Shows use bed music to help the presenter to keep a good rhythm and to make the show more aurally interesting. They also use sound effects, drops and jingles to give the show branding, and to make the transitions between a link and a song more smooth.

Someone who uses production very much to his advantage is Zane Lowe. His show is so full of sound, and most of it comes from other places than his mouth. It means there is never, ever silence which is the biggest no-no on the radio. There is so much sound the listener barely gets a chance to breathe.

Production is more lacking on Student Radio shows. On Ramair, the only output that isn't speech or music are crudely made jingles. The lack of care of production makes you think; if they don;t care enough to have production values, why should I care enough to listen?

Presenting

The Presenters voice is the way the audience are drawn into the show. If you like a bit of music, it doesn't make you want to listen to the show you heard it on again and again. However if you like a presenter, you will want to hear their show again and again. It also makes a difference how they interact with the listener.

Most daytime mainstream presenters have a cheerful breezy tone, and their pace is very even. They talk to listeners who call in as if they are old friends. The tone changes slightly on stations with 40 + audiences; they still have a cheerful tone during the day, however their pace is slower, they don't rush anything, because the audience don't want to have to work hard to understand what the presenter is showing. They have less patience than younger audiences.

Fearne Cotton presents on Radio 1 in the morning. Her tone is very strong, almost abrasive. She often drops her T's and she has a very fast pace.
Steve Wright presents on Radio 2 in the afternoon. His tone is a lot gentler, his pace slower and his diction better. The way presenters talk often mirror their audience.

In the evening presenters have more freedom, because there is less chance the audience they have are listening just because the radio is on. When the schedule goes specialist in the evening, and the audience do too.

Some presenters, again like Zane Lowe use this to their advantage. Their pace gets faster, there tone gets louder and they get more passionate about the music.

Others, like Steve Lamacq on Radio 2 get more slow paced. This is again to do with the audience. Radio 1's audience generally stay up later, so in the evenings they want music to keep them up and energise them for their evenings. Radio 2 listeners use the radio in the evenings to help them wind down and relax, and their presenting mirrors that.

Think Of The Audience

Zane Lowe's audience are passionate about music and love lots of different genres - so does Zane. Chris Moyles's audience want to be entertained in the morning and don't need too many tracks, their most important need is humour. Chris Moyles Provides that. Frank McCarthy's audience are largely armed forces who want to catch up on what's happening with new music at home, and don't care too much about talking. So that's what he gives them.

Without the audience there would be no show, and so the Audience needs to be forefront in the presenters mind. That is the main thing I learnt from listening - Think of the Audience.