Not more sequel puns if fifthquelly getting annoying

So let’s dive in again shall we?, this week we were treated to the appearance of guest lecturer who was none other then Radio lecturer and Lincoln universities community radio station manager Andrew David.

What Andrew did was to shake the whole guest lecture set up, which can be compared to adding cheese to a salad, fresh and a little more flavour. He asked to present our questions in lines with the 6W’s about Siren FM. So here’s what we learnt:

1. Started out as an online radio station broadcasting from two till six
2. Lecturers, students and the public can volunteer and the station runs schemes to get those less fortunate on the air.
3. Caters to an audience of nine to twenty five, however depending on the time it could change.
4. The studio was funded by the University.

So here’s what should be a consistent feature for each week of what shocked me. This week my shock came to me that the actual difference between mainstream and community radio stations is that community stations are looking for those niches, shows on Siren like motor mechanics or Roller derby would never get onto Radio 1 unless they were a wacky feature. As Andrew David said he’s looking for what’s in-between our ears (not hair) to make a show special which could be stripped down to those to super employable words creativity and orginiality, technologies gotten to that point it can create your bog standard music show, what makes it special is the bits in between the songs, the interviews, the features and the guests all of these are so key to making a show which would catch a listeners ear. I also found that mainstream radio is missing a serious niche, the 9 to 25 years olds and those with specialist hobbies like Jazz and projector noises, if the BBC saw these holes and dedicated little less time to over hyped DJ’s and more time to their audience figures should surely shot up quicker then Mentos in a coke bottle.

Will I ever become the master of communication ?

So this week after we did our presentations we tackled the subject of mass media in much more detail. After our previous lecture with taught about the wide range of services the BBC offers we moved on to how it and other terrestrial channels like Channel 4 came about. Essentially channels like ITV and Channel 4 were born for the simple desire of more choices from the neglected audiences strangely thanks to report done every ten years from the BBC. If you think about it seems to be quite true. Overall the BBC's content has always been deemed quite safe and most entertainment products to have moral message encoded somewhere, like Waterloo road demonstrating the perils facing teens in these so called strange times. Now compare it to something like Channel 4 (which is strangely funded via adverts and interests groups) which produces the insanely funny Intbetweeners which displays the more awkward and if done in a more serious light like Skins and controversial side of being a spotty faced teen it would never make it on to BBC thanks to it's Government influence of purity. On a side note it didn't surprise me that Channel 5 started out as a low budget alternative thanks to the amount of US import shows and pretty dull documentaries, but it did surprise me that they didn't have to produce any regional programming.

So onto what else I learnt today was again that recurring theme of how helpful technology like plans after World War 2 were used for tourism that the radio boom was created thanks to the Military using Marconi to create Morse codes for ships to be then commercialised and lead to the wireless radio, just another example of histories leap from military technology to commercial application.

So now I’ll produce my final shock. Looking at radio control models in other countries we found this:
UK radio: Public service (not such a shock)
US radio: Commercial interests (not surprising from a wealthy country)
Russian radio: Government controlled (This really shocked me, because the last time I checked Russia was a democracy and I though controlling media outlets to such a puppetry degree would be surely in breach of some kind of International law. It's not like the BBC who've only had the government control their content during Thatcher’s reign when their anti Thatcher programming was considered un-British, but even then they were given space to brief and report the facts.)

Some quite useful Tulip FM trivia

Hey their followers and non followers here’s my blog post for the week. As you may know or for may not know (so many positives and negatives) I’ve been putting together my presentation on a local radio or TV station. I choose to do a radio station and selected Tulip Fm from my home town of Spalding.

On my course of research I picked up a few facts which may not be relevant to my presentation to so I’ll pop them down below for the world to read or ignore as another ramble blog.

1. I’ve had at least 4 friends working as volunteers from the station, some got their chance by a bizarre twist of fate in which they were given a chance to work for the station in it’s years prior to going full time after they wrote poems about onions. Their original prize was going to be what must have been planed to be a super interesting tour of the local council offices in all the grey and dull glory. However that fell through so the back up prize was a tour of the radio studios and then a chance to work on the station.
2. They have the facilities for live bands and are toying with the idea of apparently doing a local Radio 1 live lounge style show, just without Fern Cotton sucking up to bands that were around before she was born.
3. I thought it was all funded privately by the station manager until I checked their website to find that they have various sponsors and advertising deals with local companies around Spalding thus making them a commercial radio station.
4. I also found out that Radio 1 DJ Greg James mentioned the station during his show many times thus boosting it’s popularity.

Y'know that thing Twilight well...

As my overly obvious title suggests this post may concern the Teen cult product known as the Twilight saga. Let's be frank you ever love it and can quote every line from it or despise it from the dim witted pretty boys to the obvious parallels between Romeo and Juliet.

Though right here I'm going to propose a quite controversial line of thought:
Twilight may be plague on the older legions of the world but it does have educational benefits ?
I'll break this down in the following points:
1. The actual intelligence of the writing may be in question but this book has done what Harry Potter did a long time ago and got kids reading thus using a little more brain power then usual and probably dragged them away from the teen dramas clogging up TV like One Tree Hill and the Vampire diaries.
2. This has probably inspired the little unknown trend of Emo's to do a little more then hang around in public and chortle and various random 'jokes' and maybe get a better grasp of the English language.

Of course there are the many downsides:
1. Throughout the entire series their seems to be this theme, "Oh hey I'm in love or just so darn so special it's OK to treat other people like crap"
2. The general idea that you need someone else to be happy
3. It's seems to obsessed with providing teen stars wannabes a chance to walk around with their tops off

Forquel !

So let's skip the basics and jump right in, again I had an slight headache after having my head blown again by today's enlightening lecture. I'm starting to see how insanely intricate the BBC and why it's so prominent as a media giver with BBC board of trustees and a Director general below them running things, it's so well organised to filter out anything unsuitable for air, well except a few exceptions here and their when they didn't quite guess the response of the audience. I'm starting to wonder if maybe an independent media producer got a little more organised and a tad better funded they could go into competition with the BBC, not to knock independent outlets that's basically where the hot blistering talent (like Chris Tarrant) is produced from and they usually make great work experience placements, which is all to great for me.

I also found how the BBC being many things like an entertainer you could basically call it an informer which is good the Government fund it which tends to explain why theirs little risque shows like Shameless or Pete vs Life on the BBC due to their slightly unsuitable nature. I'm still reeling at the TV licence and how broken to a monthly cost isn't to bad, just when I grow up I don't want to be paying a hundred pounds plus to watch cheap repeats of BBC 3's reality tv gems like Dog borstal.

OK this week I've been set a task of researching a local media outlet like radio or TV. I've chosen my home radio station Tulip FM, so here's some top shocking facts (for me) that I've found out:
1. Thanks to Ofcom I found out they tend to dig into the managerial team background to see if they're relevant for a community radio station.
2. I found out it was totally funded by advertising when I thought it was an eccentric radio lover who partially privately funded it.
3. I had no idea it's been running since 2001 (so where was my head when I was 9 ?, probably watching Power ranges and being exposed to dirty words)

Week 3- the weak link in the blogging franchise ?

Greetings fellow communicators it's the time of week once again where I regale you with a tale of my work based learning lecture. Now if you're wondering why I used communicators in bold instead of something much more simple I'll begin to explain.

This week again I had my brain introduced to a stack load of information I had already but I just wasn't aware of. This came in the form of communication I had some idea their communication requires body language,diction and of course dialogue for someone to get the whole message (which tends to be the down fall or print and radio sometimes) across, this is of course super important for journalists who need to know how to communicate so we can put the news across. This was explained in various theories like the famous Greek Philosopher Aristotle's model of communication which followed the points of thinking of something to say to actually saying it. So here I go trying to demonstrate to everyone (but mainly my lecturer) of how I think one of these theories work, I'm going to use the recent news report based about popular comedian Jon Stewart who inspired CNN reporter Rick Sanchez to make some anti Semite remarks recently, I will use the theory of Harold D Lasswell which is as follows:
Who: This covers who said it. So in this case it would be Rick Sanchez
Says what: What the the who said. This would be Mr Sanchez calling Mr Stewart a bigot and implying all major US News outlets are ran by members of the Jewish faith. For those who missed he said:
"CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they -- the people in this country who are Jewish -- are an oppressed minority? Yeah. [sarcastically]"- Taken from the Huffington Post
In which channel: This is the media outlet that was used. In this case it was on US radio
To whom: This whom the target audience is, so in this case regular listeners Sirius radio network
With what effect ?: This would classify the feedback from the target audience and listeners, so in this case the effect would be CNN management firing Mr Sanchez for his what was considered inappropriate and anti semites remarks.

The sequel (and hopefully not disapointing post)

So here we are in week 3 of me attending Uni. I am still 18 and according to my ID my name is still Josh Francis.

So in today’s class I can conclude I probably wouldn’t prosper in the production team at the BBC thanks to what was quite an interesting quiz on Safeguarding trust. Safeguarding trust for those who are aren’t to media savvy and those who are marking me is the method into how the BBC ensure they maintain their strong relationship with the public by ensuring all content is truthful and adheres various standards of tastes and decency, this works on the whole except for a few incidents which slip through the net (like the Andrews Sachs scandal). Overall I think this course is going to teach me a quality I may be missing in finding ways to maintain clear and concise programming despite errors. To break this down in case I’ve used to many big words I need to think more about the human element of journalism and think more carefully about if my work may ethically be a little of, I understand the laws like the Defamation act (in where if I saw something untrue or offence I could be taken to court), it’s just a shame their isn’t an aptly titled The journalism decency act (copyrighting that name if I ever end up in law).

Today I’ve also learnt that the BBC are pretty determined to maintain this high standard trust by releasing this quiz which acts like a gateway into the thought process of the BBC production staff and ceases to amaze me how the very little details to do count. Like how a pre recorded news report which comments on the traffic will need an additional comment by a live reporter to confirm the traffic is still pretty bad.