2. Geographical location
The Isle of Wight…
– We have targeted a specific geographical location which we hope you will find to be
evident when you hear our final bulletin. Due to the requirement of creating a local
radio news bulletin, it was necessary to appeal to individuals from the south of
England. Therefore we deduced that strong accents such as Welsh, Scottish or
northern would perhaps not be as comprehendible as a typical southern accent; we
tried to speak clearly and pronounce each word as best as we could in accordance
to how we thought people in our local area. However, we attempted to avoid some
of the Isle of Wight’s colloquial language, such as the term ‘somewhen’, which
would not be used in other areas of England- so as to keep the bulletin professional.
With the Isle of Wight festival and the Bestival, music is a massive part of Island life
and so radio is extremely popular down here.
3. Gender
– We tried to maintain a gender-neutral bulletin because our target audience is
not gender-specific. We did this by using a male news reporter as well as the
two females (Jenna and I) as we felt this created the potential for a wider
audience, one that could be attracted to a radio station that is not dictated by
either males or females but instead recites the current news without bigotry or
the potential for claims of gender inequality within the industry, as this is too
common in modern society.
4. Age
– Our target audience is, however, age-specific. Our target audience can be
characterized as young individuals around the ages of sixteen through to the
early twenties. We chose this target audience as we felt as though we could use
our own experience (being young people ourselves) to create a bulletin that we
felt we could also engage with. I feel as though we accomplished this by keeping
each story as short as we possibly could so that the impact of each story would
not be too overwhelming for the adolescent following. Additionally, we
recognized that the use of three young presenters was perhaps another way to
conform to the inclinations of our audience.
5. Social class
– We did not initially attempt to aim our radio station at an identifiable social
group as we felt that, in general, it is difficult to pin-point young people as just
one social class; the fact that the majority of them do not have a job could make
them a member of a lower class, yet the fact that a large number of us are a
part of the educational system suggests that we have more cultural knowledge,
meaning that we could also be categorised as middle or established middle
class. Because it is so difficult to identify the class of a student, we decided not
to do so at all. However, having analysed our script and broadcast, I could say
that our language and chosen stories better conform to established middle class
through to emergent service workers, however would probably not appeal to
either the ‘precariat’ class or the social ‘elite’.
