The document discusses the creation of a radio news bulletin that was meant to mimic the style and format of bulletins produced by Oldham Community Radio. It describes design choices made around the opening jingle, scripting conventions, presenter qualities, story selection, pacing, and inclusion of interviews/vox pops. Overall the goal was to match the production value and feel of OCR bulletins while condensing content to fit a 5 minute timeframe.

1. 1.) The opening of the news bulletin is very similar to the regular news
bulletin created by Oldham Community radio. It has a jingle just as most
radio stations and news shows do. The jingle was included because it
allows familiarity with the show and when the audience hear it, they
know what is being played. It is a form of representation showing that
the news show is related to that jingle. I think that the jingle we included
is a little too cheery and lighthearted and sounds a little too
childish.Because the target audience for our radio show is mainly
teenagers and the older generation so I think the tune for the jingle
could be changed to make the overall product better. The vocals
however matched the regular news bulletin perfectly as they too have a
man vocalising the station’s name and number.
2) The scripting too was very similar to other OCR news because it
follows the same conventions as other news stories. This was done
because my group and I wanted to make the news story similar to other
news story such as ITV news and BBC news. That is why I included more
complex language into the script to make the language more formal .
This is because the formality is important in the news. In addition, just as
all news stories too include the main details of the story, I included the 5
Ws into the scripting including the details of who what where why when
and how in each news story. For the hard news story this included: An
old woman, was killed in a tram accident, In Failsworth, accidentally, at
the time, because of the new tram lines. This was followed for each
news story to ensure all details were included.
3) When my group and I were thinking of different ideas for the
presenter, we decided that the most important quality is clarity. It is
essential that the presenter speaks clearly so that they can be
understood. On national radio stations were accents are different
throughout regions, the presenter commonly speaks with receipted
pronunciation so that the entire audience can understand. Normally this
is not the case with small local broadcasts such as Oldham Community
Radio because their accent would be local to the area that the station is
being broadcast in. However with the news there is still some
importance with clarity. This is why our presenter spoke clearly with
more complex vocabulary in the dialogue. The only change that I would
make is that the presenter sounds too unconfident and this shouldn’t be
so. The presenter should be confident and speak well and deliver the

2. news with a strong attitude. If the presenter’s parts could be re-
recorded I would suggest this change.
4) For me and my group’s hard news story we followed the general
structure that a hard news story should follow. We included the 5 Ws, all
the needed details and as for the story itself we made sure that it
affected the audience. Just as OCR receives its stories from Sky news, we
too could not gather the news story ourselves. I found the article
originally on the BBC news website and I believed that it affected the
audience. There are new tram lines that have been built around Oldham
that will most likely be used by most of people that listen to OCR. This
means that the audience will relate a lot more to the story and will
create a larger listening group. The old woman that was hit by a tram
relates to other people in the older generation as this may lead them to
believe that the tram lines are not safe or after the story they may be
more inclined to trust the tram lines. The younger generations will most
probably be using the tram lines to go to various destinations either to
work or simply to travel.
5) Keeping with the similarity of OCR, the pace of the bulletin is quite
fast but the presenter is still able to keep the clarity in the piece and
make the overall piece clear and understandable. This is because of the
5 minute time limit that was indicated at the start of the task and the
information that was put into the piece was needed but too needed to
fit in the allocated time slot. This meant that we had to deliver the news
fast. Because of the amount of news that was originally included in the
task, the overall time was around 15 minutes long however a lot was
irrelevant and could be removed. Once they were deleted, the overall
time came down to around 6 minutes and then other pieces simply had
to be removed to make the piece last 5 minutes.
6) Just as most other news stories, the standard convention was
followed of using a hard news story and then a soft news story and
finishing with an off the wall news story. We only had time to cover 3
stories within the given time limit however this is common on most
small radio news shows. I ensured that one of each story was covered
because this is both what the brief for the story needed and is also the
standard structure for most news stories

3. 7) As both OCR does and most other local news radio shows include
different features into their stories, so too did we. As mentioned, the
standard structure was followed for all 3 stories and in the hard news
story the main focus was on an interview with Niel Harrison to cover the
bulk of the story. This was introduced first and then the interview took
place. This was done to give the audience an inside knowledge of how
the safety works with the trams. This was done to the soft news story as
well in that the main bulk of the story was done through an interview
with the manager of a local TESCO store. This was done again to deliver
an inside story from the perspective of TESCO itself. The off the wall
story however was different in that there is no main interview. The story
was set into 2 different parts giving the details of the new renewal at
Oldham college and then vox pops from the students themselves giving
indication of their views and how it will affect their education. This was
included as it relates to the younger generation in Oldham as it is both a
story that affects people of their age group whilst also including the
actual students of the college
8) Overall the finished piece was similar in production value as OCR
would have created. All of the recordings were of equal quality because
they were recorded using professional equipment. This was the original
idea as the quality was essential from the very beginning. The jingle that
was included was of good quality and the vocals were similar to other
news stories. The soundbed underneath didn’t sound as similar as
originally wanted however it is still similar to other soundbeds. All
hesitation in the clip was cut out to make the show flow smoother and
of a higher quality and all the sound levels were kept the same. These
were all intentionally done to keep the highest quality piece possible.