Radio Stations
BBC is a Public Broadcasting Service which is funded by a license fee and does not air commercials. BBC Radio is both national and regional; there are over 40 local/regional stations attracting more than nine million listeners each week.
National commercial radio: there are three of these stations; Classic FM, Talk sport and Absolute Radio.
National Brands: these are regional stations which have been collected into network, sharing some programmes and syndicate outputs. There are: Global Radio; Heart, Galaxy, Gold and Radio X. Bauer Group; Kiss and Magic. Guardian Media Group; Real Radio.
Talk sport: https://talksport.com/
Heart: https://www.heart.co.uk/
Kiss: https://planetradio.co.uk/kiss/
Independent local radio: these are regional commercial stations. They are specific to a certain area of the country and not part of a network.
Community radio: this is a different format from public service and commercial stations. Community stations serve their local areas and produce content of interest to local people. The stations are non profit making and are usually funded by the local community.
Hospital radio: there are hundreds of these radio stations based in hospitals and staffed by volunteers, broadcasting in the UK. Many radio presenters started out in hospital or community radio.
Late Night Woman’s Hour
Who is Lauren Laverne?
Lauren Fisher, professionally known as Lauren Laverne is an English radio DJ, model, television presenter, author, singer and comedian. Laverne is from Sunderland in the North East of England.
What does she do?
Laverne presents television programmes such as 10 O’clock Live for Channel 4, and The Culture Show. She also does coverage of Glastonbury Festival for BBC. In Radio, Laverne guest edited Woman’s Hour and then later in 2015 she hosted Late Night Woman’s Hour, a spinoff series. Laverne took over Desert Island Discs in September 2018.
Late Night Woman’s Hour: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05nrmhm
Desert Island Discs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr
Why do you think she is a good choice to present a Radio 4 show?
She is a good choice to present a Radio 4 show because Radio 4 is a speech based radio station and it includes intellectual answers and uses discussions to create a variety of answers that listeners can respond to in an intellectual way. Laverne is a good choice because she isn’t necessarily from London and doesn’t talk like someone from London, so it is easy to draw attention to her. Laverne is also of the age that someone would listen to Radio 4, and she would be able to attract an audience to listen to her.
What is Late Night Woman’s Hour about?
Late Night Woman’s hour is a spinoff series from Woman’s Hour that was first broadcasted in 2015. Each episode of Late Night Woman’s Hour revolves around a theme and involves informal and in depth discussions. Some themes that have been included on the radio programme are female friendships, women in sport and anxiety.
How does Late Night Woman’s Hour appeal to audiences?
Lauren Laverne is of similar age to the target audience of Late Night Woman’s Hour which will allow audiences to connect with the presenter easier. Laverne also subverts the typical Radio 4 presenter with her northern accent which makes her more relatable to the audience. Although the language is still intelligent, it is aimed at a younger demographic and the mode of address is aimed at younger people rather than the older demographic, whom can also listen to the radio programme. Late Night Woman’s Hour appeals to a specific audience because of the time it is on with the stripped schedule because older people would usually not be awake at 10pm at night. The themes tackled in the programme are aimed for younger people to interact and have their opinions to be able to have discussions on the programme or with other listeners. Late Night Woman’s Hour is able to be reached on multiple platforms so it has a global target audience.
Episode of LNWH: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0801ql5
Ofcom
What is the Broadcasting Code?
The Broadcasting Code is a set of rules that television, film and radio have to follow to have the programme on air without any complaints. The Broadcasting Code is split up into different sections: Protecting the under-eighteens; harm and offence; crime, disorder, hatred and abuse; religion; due impartiality and due accuracy; elections and referendums; fairness; privacy; commercial references on TV and commercial communications on radio.
Broadcasting Code: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code
What is the Broadcasting Bulletin?
The Broadcast Bulletin is a place where Ofcom store all the complaints about TV and radio broadcasts.
Broadcasting Bulletin: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/bulletins/broadcast-bulletins
THEORIES
Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory
Hall asserted that communication is a process involving encoding by producers and decoding by audiences. He said there are three ways in which meanings and messages will be decoded by an audience:
Dominant Position: the audience accepts the intended meaning of the encoded product.
Negotiated Reading: the audience acknowledge some of the messages encoded by the producers of the product but may question or adapt to be more relatable in their own experiences.
Oppositional Reading: the encoders message is understood, but the decoder disagrees with it.
Curran and Seaton: Power and Media Industry
Main points of this theory are:
Media Producers are controlled by a small number of companies primarily driven by the logic of profit and power.
The idea that media concentration generally limits or inhibits variety, creativity and quality.
The idea that more socially diverse patterns of ownership help to create the conditions for more varied and adventurous patterns of ownership.
Audiences
In a world dominated by visual images many people wonder how radio has been able to survive and develop. Some reasons are:
Blind Medium: only involves a sense of hearing with no visual images and allows for a sense of imagination.
Companion Medium: radio provides a strong sense of personal communication for the audience. It is also interactive, audiences can phone or text the show and request music.
Intimate Medium: direct mode of address encourages intimacy with the listener.
Undemanding Medium: allows the audience to do other things with their time while listening to the radio.
The BBC Review
Radio 4 delivers the BBC public purpose to nearly eleven million listeners, who tune in on average for 11 hours each week. Our review found that Radio 4 sets the standards for high quality, intelligent speech radio programming. It is highly thought of by it’s audience and is regarded as a ‘National Institution’.
Late Night Woman’s Hour Case Study
The Guardian reviews Late Night Woman’s Hour as being a ‘niche hit’ with the listeners after being a spin off from Woman’s Hour. The difference between the two shows is the time they air and the idea that Late Night Woman’s Hour can delve into intimate topics and discussions that can’t happen on Woman’s Hour at 10am. The Guardian is fairly left wing and this is shown by the way it talks about Late Night Woman’s Hour with ‘praising it’s in depth discussions’ from the listeners and have said that it ‘provides a refreshing antidote to some of the BBC’s other content’.
The Guardian also talks about the f-bomb being dropped on the show after just ‘a week on air’. It talks about how the f-bomb would ‘make regular listeners choke on their breakfast tea’ if the listeners were from Woman’s Hour, listening to the newly aired show they would most likely be astounded by the discussions on the show.
The Guardian’s readers would probably have a negotiated reading position while reading through the article about Late Night Woman’s Hour where they can agree with some of the messages but can also change them to become more relevant to them.
The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/21/lauren-laverne-radio-4-late-night-womans-hour-bbc
Blog Reviews: https://chartable.com/podcasts/late-night-womans-hour/reviews
Chloe Nottage Media 