Radio Evaluation
Subcity internet radio / Mojo, too very different shows, but one same goal, to raise money for Children In Need and we did that well! The strengths and weaknesses of these shows are varied.
In Subcity I thought we had our show planned out to a tee! We planned and practiced the show for almost 2 months, researched, promoted, advertised and got sponsored by HMV. We really dug our nails into this assignment, wanting to be the best radio show the college has had.
I feel that the actual show itself went very well, Charlie the producer made sure that everything was running smooth and that we were all doing our jobs correctly . I personally think that we all contributed a lot to the show making it work well. The videos we did to promote the show we also a lot of fun making them and I think that we gained more views from having them on the Facebook and YouTube sites as people would constantly see new updates, almost like drilling it into their minds that they need to tune into Subcity.
My favourite video that we produced was the Dubstep bogies, it was such fun doing as well as getting the name out there. It felt like evening the people that hate our type of music we interacting with the music and having fun and that are what I feel Subcity was all about.
Problems that we did face with show was getting everyone’s work handed in on time, as we all opted for the do an individual piece of work for the group and then hand it as one large piece research. The only downside to this style of research is depending on whether a certain member of the group remembers to send us the specific piece of work when we need it in. We had a couple of idents that we had created for the show, they were really good and smooth flowing but due to copyright implications that we didn’t know about, we had to change the name of the show create a new Facebook page and gather at least 100 members on the page for HMV to continue sponsoring us, and this all occurred 2 days before the real show. One thing that did annoy me was that my live mix was cut short, but I don’t blame anyone for this, because this stuff happens and we just had to deal with it. In the future I think we will just have to time it better or cut down the scripted conversation to work with the mix. Well done to Charlie for making a really well produced show.
Now in my honest opinion I thought that because we spent so much time on Subcity that the Mojo show was sort of neglected, not in the way that we didn’t do the work, but that we didn’t put as much effort into it as we did with Subcity. The weakness’s with Mojo was that our live performances never happened which was meant to be the original point of the show, but we fixed this and had recorded performances which still worked very well.
The Mojo show was produced and run by Dan; it was a completely different style show to Subcity genre. In a way, because it was so different made it more of a challenge, as I said above, we spent so much more time on Subcity, that it made it hard to turn off the different style of music which is Subcity to the completely different style of the Mojo show which was indie live lounge style. Saying that, Dan lead the way very well and deserves a thumbs up for his hard work when everything seemed to go downhill with the live performances.
I think that final show wasn’t bad, but it could of gone a lot better .The communication broke down and we all had blank faces. We were starting saying things that weren’t on the script and were mixed up in the wrong order. And overall we messed up the scripted parts but the rest of the show went well in my opinion. To improve on this I think we need to practice our lines more even though Dan told us to but we thought we could just blag it off as we went along, so to Dan I apologise for not listening to you when you told me to read your script
Now drawing comparisons from our radio shows to the ones which I analysed.
Well for a starter both shows worked, but comparing our shows to their shows, they are completely different for example with Subcity; we had a niche market area for music (Dubstep & Drum N Bass) unlike radio 1 and radio 6 where they have certain times for this certain type of music. Heart fm really don’t get a choice in what they play as they have to do whatever their area consists of and what there sponsors say. Now as with Subcity, Vibes fm also is the same that radio1 and radio 6 both have certain times where they play live lounge covers, unlike us who base our whole shows around these types of genre.
Our target audience for both shows is for the younger generation 15 – 25, we base this purely on what our research gave us from the primary/secondary research and the focus groups. These types of genre of music is specifically targeted at these ages because from 15 – 25 is when you can start going out and experiencing these styles of music.
After doing all of our research we decided to set up a YouTube channel to upload music we wanted to play in the show, as well as that we created a Facebook page. The YouTube page seemed to get going really fast along with the cross media features we also had business cards printed with the show and details on there. It proved to be a massive advantage to us as we had 116 subscribers and almost 24,000 views, It was also a great advantage to us that we had a good sponsor , HMV. This was great because HMV represents music and this was what we wanted to get a across to our viewers that our show was all about the music. HMV also gave us DVD’s to our competition winners and I believe it was 12p to every listener we had.
For our audience feedback we had texts, emails, Facebook pages, YouTube pages and simply people giving the thumbs up! This seemed to work as we had 54 viewers on the day for Subcity and like 1 – 2 for mojo.
Now drawing another example of this is Annie Mac’s show on radio 1, at 7 – 9 on a Friday night, different types of music that gets you in the mood to go out and have a good time. Now her show’s target audience is roughly 15 – 30, which is similar to ours, From knowing this we tried to get the latest spot which was 4 - 5 . But in the future of Subcity we intend to pre-record our show and play them at these times when can get the most amount of viewer possible.
I feel on both shows that the content was right for the intended age, as I said earlier on, from our audience research, these types of music shows were favoured more than any other, for Subcity, this music gets you in a great mood for good night out and ready for a dance, like we’d done promotional video’s for velvet Chicago’s where this type of music is loved. Now for mojo, this music much more chilled out and in my opinion more fun to watch, e.g. live bands. So you could say we don’t even need to find out why the contents of the show suits the intended age because all you have to do is look at festivals, how popular they are with the young generation. Or if you just want to chill out in the sun like most students do, listening to some relaxing live lounge, Indie and Rock tunes
Overall with both Subcity and mojo show, I think that they both went very very well, I am very proud of our group, I could truthfully say that with Subcity there were almost no faults bar me getting cut off halfway through my dj set, but if I didn’t get cut off I don’t think I would have stopped, and we are happy to say that we are continuing Subcity till we run it dry. Unfortunately for mojo I think it’s the end of road but Subcity rules our lives now.
