Commercial radio

Commercial Radio:

Throughout this essay I will be looking at three different purposes of commercial radio. I will be looking at promoting events, how radio stations choose their music and the needs for promoting different musicians’ music.

Radio stations can be used tom promote different events. A key example of this is Capital’s summer time ball; Capital use their own station to promote their event as those who listen to Capital are the primary target audience for the concert. This can also be used to make money through multiple listeners phoning in to win tickets as each phone call has a standard charge.

Radio stations are also used to promote new artists music but also to provide new music to those who tune into the station. This allows the station to earn money as new artists might pay for their songs to be listened to at peak times. For example, when parents are picking their children up from school or during rush hour. This allows the station to generate revenue from advertising fees. The radio station will then see how the new artists music is reacted to and then decide if they should play the song more regularly.

Each commercial radio station has a different purpose; certain stations are expected to play certain genres of music or discuss certain topics in correlation to their target audiences’ interests. An example of this would be Kiss FM. Kiss are expected to play dance and RnB music and therefore speak about topics that relate to these genres of music.

Concluding, commercial radios main purpose is to raise revenue by attracting large target audiences and promoting events that they believe their target audience will be attracted to. However, radio stations can also raise revenue by making artists pay for their music to be played on the station at peak times. 

Task 2

Task 1

Structuralism: Explore the ways in which audiences gain meaning from media texts

Semiotics: refers to the simplest level meaning of a sign. Eg: a word, image, object or sound

Auteur theory: When the director is viewed as the major creative force in a motion picture. Eg: Quentin Tarantino - Pulp Fiction

Feminism: Equality between both sexes; where woman are treated as equal to men

Queer theory: Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself. Queer theory focuses on the mismatch between sex, gender and desire.

Marxism: The concept of class struggle plays a central role in understanding society's allegedly inevitable development from bourgeois oppression under capitalism to a socialist and ultimately classless society.

Psychoanalytic: a systematic structure of theories concerning the relation of conscious an unconscious
psychological processes.


Task 2

The Greatest Showman:
Genre: Romance, Drama, Biography and Musical
Director: Micheal Gracey
Entended audience: Teenagers and young adults how are interested in musicals and romance.

The Greatest Showman attracts a wide audience through its use of its mixtape that is now played on all music stations. The audience are drawn in by romance as they watch two young adults fall in love over their involvement with each other in the circus.


Baby Driver:
Genre: Action, Crime and Drama
Director: Edgar Wright
Entended audience: Teenagers and young adults

Baby Driver has a secondary audience of people who enjoy action and crime films. By having a secondary audience this allows the film makers to draw in a wider audience. 

Task 1

Analytical Approaches:


Genre analysis: Looking at several samples of particular genre to analyse their similarities and differences in terms of their purposes
Example:

Content analysis: A research method that for studying documents and communication artefacts. Example: Pictures, audio and radio

Narrative analysis: Occurs when one or more narrators engage is sharing or recounting a story. The story may take multiple turns throughout the course of the conversation. Stories and narratives may share common structural features.

Reception study: A version of the readers response that emphasises each particular reader's reception or interpretation in making a meaning from the text. Can be referred to as the audiences reception.
Example: Age, Beliefs, Culture, Gender, Life experience, Mood at time of viewing

Fan study: The field of scholarly research focused on media fans and fan cultures. Fan cultures are the social and cultural infrastructures that support fan activities and interests.

Pulp Fiction (1994)  - analyse content, narrative and genre

Pulp Fiction is based on the stories of two american hit men, a boxer, a gangster's wife and a pair of diner bandits. These four different stories all become intertwined based on violence and redemption. Throughout the entire film all four different stories are told in first person narrative, allowing the people watching to experience the film first hand. By using first person narrative the audience can place themselves in the situation and can relate to the characters. The genre of film Pulp Fiction falls under is crime/drama; this is due to the violent nature used in all four different stories.