ANALYSISof news/radio casts

We asked twenty

people , both male

and female 10 questions about

what they enjoy and

like about radio and

news casts.

We ensured we

asked 10 males and

10 females, all

around the same

age(15 to early

thirties) in order to

gain mixed views and

opinions.

How often do you listen to the news?

Our results show that the highest percentage of people said they listen to the news weekly. (47.34%) This shows that our target audience are regular listeners of the news and will tune in daily. Also regular listeners to the news are usually loyal to one company radio show.

What news topics would interest you?

The results showed 10.00% people enjoy listening to sports news, 15.00% people answered political news and the remainder of people said celebrity news. (70.00%) This clearly illustrates that celebrity news is the most popular. We will apply this in our news cast by broadcasting the latest news about celebrities as that’s what are audience supposedly enjoy the most. However we will also air other types of news to appeal to different audiences.

What is the ideal length of each news story?

55.0 % of people said they prefer news casts being five minutes. This was majority of the people we asked. This conveys our target audience prefers short, to the point news compared to lengthy casts. Perhaps this is because long news casts can be boring. Therefore we will keep our news stories short to maintain our audiences attention.

Do you prefer a male or female news reporter and why?

16.67% of people we asked said they would prefer a male news reporter rather than a women, 22.22% said they’d prefer a women than a man and most people said both. (61.11%). This suggests that people like to hear a range of voices and opinions rather then just one as it keeps it more exciting and keeps them more engaged. This has helped us as now we will try to get a male voice too, though this may be a bit difficult as we go to an all girls school.

What radio stations do you listen to?

We asked people what radio stations they listen to, in order to get a understanding of what our viewers like. The highest percentage (65.00%) of people said capital fm. According to our research capital FM is most known for music and celebrity news. We will try to apply this to our radio station but show how were unique to other radio stations at the same time.

Do you think it's more important the news entertains or informs an audience?

We wanted to know why people watch the news, to inform or entertain? 65.00% of people said a mix of both. This showed us we have to have a balance of serious and fun news in our radio cast. So, we decided were going to add serious news such as political news as well as light, celebrity news.

How do you listen to the radio?

A question that we thought was vital was how people listen to the radio. 45% of people said with their family. 25.00% of people said alone, 25.00% also said with their friends and the remainder of the people said all of the above. We wanted to gain a feel of the atmosphere when people watch the news. Who you watch the news is important on the atmosphere created.

What kind of news reporter do you like?

All these results were quite close. This showed us that all of these are important in presenting. 50.00% people said clear, 55.00% said confident and the highest percentage (60.00%)was for enthusiasm. We are going to use this information to help us present out news cast. We will try to balance out all of them in order to keep our audience interested.

What kind of music do you like in a news cast?

We wanted to know what kind of music people enjoy listening to at the introduction of a news cast. We left the answers as quite broad instead of leaving them as genres of music as we didn’t want to limit our choices. For example we want to be able to use all the music genres, pop, R&B, etch. 15.00% said soothing, 30.00% said calming, 35.00% said dramatic and 45.00% said fun music. The fact that the highest percentage was for fun illustrated that exciting, fun music is the most likely to grab the attention of our listeners creating a joyful atmosphere.

Do you enjoy listening to the news?

We asked this question to gain an understanding of how many people of our target audience actually like watching the news and watch it because they want to. 25.00% said no and 75.00% said yes. This gave us an insight of the percentage of people who will go out of their way to watch our news casts.

conclusion

Overall, this has been very useful for us. We will use what we have found and apply this to our news stories. For example in one of the questions we asked if people enjoy watching news casts. Although the majority said yes, 25.00% said no. This has motivated us to make our news stories informative but entertaining at the same time, to make listening to the news more entertaining for those who said no, so at the end of listening to our news story, they can actually say they like listening to the news.