In this assignment I will produce a detailed written
evaluation on my two news broadcasts, I will discuss the process of choosing
the news stories, the technical production of the news broadcasts, and audience
feedback etc.
When preparing for the broadcast of the local news, Fay and
I began researching current local stories in the news at the time, looking at
news websites such as BBC and Google news, this was a lot of help as we took
stories from the website and wrote them in our own words, most of which were
based in Newcastle or the surrounding area. We did this to give a personal
feeling, as it would be very close to home for the audience listening. To
prepare, we also took the time to listen to other local news bulletins such as
Metro Radio and BBC Radio 1. This news broadcast would most likely be aired on
a station like Metro Radio, as they are a very local radio station for the
North East and include many local stories in their news broadcasts. Of course we
didn’t use all local news stories, we also included some national headlines
from around the world, this was to inform the audience of what is happening in
other news all around the world rather than just on their front door. The
stories we had chosen were: a murder investigation that had taken place in 1992
as there was an update – this was shocking news for the North East as they were
unaware for so many years of how the young girl was brutally murdered in
Sunderland, this story was all copy and was fairly short as there wasn’t much
information that had been released at the time, aside from the suspects name
and how he was currently on bail pending further investigation.
Next, a story on a 9-year-old girl had been attacked in her
car as an unknown assailant had thrown a glass beer bottle towards the moving
vehicle and it flew straight through the open window and slashed all of the
young girls face and hands, this is a shocking story and is there to add
emotion to the bulletin. This story as copy and audio as it had an audio clip
of an interview with the youngster, this adds colour to the report and keeps
the audience interested by giving them a change of voice.
After, we talked about the new Washington Leisure Centre and
when it is scheduled to be built, we added additional information on what
facilities the centre will include. We incorporated this story into our news
bulletin to inform the local North East audiences of the new fun activities
they can participate in. The way this story is continuous and requires constant
updates is very useful as it is something the listeners can look forward to
hearing about in upcoming news reports. This story was in copy style.
Within the local news bulletin we discussed business and how
two companies that are very big in the UK are merging (Carphone Warehouse and
Dixons). We included this story as it is fairly big news for these businesses
and the British public would like to hear about it. This is an example of
National news as it affects the whole country not just the local area of the
North East.
After this story we aired the local sport and football news,
we included the player’s names and broadcasted the highlights of the games. We
made sure we talked about both local football teams, Newcastle and Sunderland
to appeal to the whole North East target audience. We chose to focus on
football as it is the most popular sport in the North East and it gets the
attention of the majority of the audience. Fay and I included audio from fans
of both teams; this makes the style of the story copy and audio.
We ended our news bulletin on a light-hearted note; it was
an entertainment story on celebrities and the BAFTA’s, which had just taken
place. We did this to add the entertainment factor and end on a cheery story.
We edited our local new bulletin on Garageband, which
allowed us to make it more exciting by adding a bed and also some stingers to
separate the stories easier. By adding these, we kept the audience entertained
and engaged with the news broadcast. I don’t recall any problems whilst
editing, everything went very smoothly and efficiently. The feedback we
received after presenting our local news broadcast to the class was mainly
positive, we got many 4-5/5 for technical standard and fitness for purpose. The
comments we received were mostly on how the beds and stingers were entertaining
and how the stories ‘suited the localness’. Although, we did receive some
feedback on how the volume of sound as different for different things such as
the audio clips, saying that they needed to be slightly louder. Changing the
volume on Garageband could easily solve this; I will take this as constructive
criticism and keep a note of it for future reference.
After recording our local news bulletin we created another
bulletin in the style of BBC Radio 1. But before we began, we listened to
‘Newsbeat’ to get a feel of the style of radio station and style of bulletin;
we also looked at news websites such as BBC News and Sky News. We understood
that the news bulletins included beds of new, recent songs and included stories
all over the country and some from around the world. We wanted to begin the
broadcast with the biggest story at the time, this was the story on the missing
Malaysian airplane, in the broadcast we included the amount of passengers on
board, where it was headed, where it was last seen, we did this in case the
audience didn’t know all the information about the story and we began talking
about it as if they automatically would know. We also included information on
the other countries helping with the search. This was a copy story.
The next story was quite light-hearted and entertaining, but
also was fairly serious; it was a story about the amount of women taking up
roles in films. It was another copy story and we included facts and figures
using percentages to make it more interesting. We felt that this would target
the audience of 16 – 24 year olds not only interested in media but also film,
this isn’t breaking news but it is quite easy listening and something good to
know. These types of stories are quite popular on BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat so we
thought it would go very well with the broadcast.
Our next story was about a more serious matter. It was about
young criminals and whether or not they should serve tougher sentences. We felt
that with story suited Radio 1’s target audience well as it is about their same
age group. We made this story copy and audio to give the audience another voice
to listen to, and keep the listeners engaged, it also adds colour and depth to
the bulletin, producing more emotion.
We then decided to broadcast an entertainment story about
David Cameron and Sir Patrick Steward. We added this story to create some
humour to our news bulletin and surprise the audience by showing a member of
parliament around on a social networking site, its not something you see
everyday! This story was quite long but in the end we decided to keep it as
copy as there wasn’t much audio we could add.
The following story was another light-hearted one to
entertain and inform the audience about the new and upcoming Disney Remix CD,
songs on the album include Frozen’s ‘Let It Go’ and The Lion King’s ‘Circle Of
Life’ with a twist, they are all remixed by current DJ’s such as Avicii and
Armin Van Buuren. We thought this was an effective story to include on our
Radio 1 news bulletin as the CD’s fits perfectly with the target audience of
the radio station. We kept this as copy but added a fun bed of a popular song
to keep the audience entertained.
We ended the bulletin on a sports report; this was a copy
story and was fairly short. As BBC Radio 1 is national we needed to cover the
most anticipated games that had take place. To find this out we researched by
listening to Newsbeat and understood what teams they talk about the most,
showing which teams and type of sports the audience enjoy hearing about the
most. We found out that they mainly enjoy football and rugby. After researching
this information we then went onto the BBC Sport website and discussed the
highlights of the games in our news bulletin.
The feedback we received after presenting our BBC Radio 1
styled news broadcast to the class was mainly all positive, everyone enjoyed
listening to the stories we had chosen and liked the order they were placed in.
The personal feedback I received was very good although I did receive a few
comments on how I spoke quite fast at some points, I will take this as
constructive criticism and try to slow down my speech for next time, but other
than that my personal feedback was all positive. The only one negative comment
we received for our overall new broadcast was the sound quality. Sometimes Fay
and I spoke too close to the microphone, which created a muffled sound, this is
because we didn’t live record the show - it was pre-recorded. Next time we create
a news bulletin we will have to record it live to make it sound professional,
just like BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat.
Overall I was very pleased with our two news broadcasts, but
I do think there is room for improvement to make them sound much more professional.
The sound quality could be easily improved for next time, but other than that I
am happy with the way it has turned out.
