Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Before I began any research I started with my preliminary task, the aim of this was to teach me how to record, edit and get an idea of traditional radio conventions I would be using in my final task.

I did have previous experience with recording and editing with my GCSE radio show, however it had been a long period of time since I had recorded so my skills weren't up to scratch. When looking back at my preliminary task the most prominent improvement I noticed was the voices I used to record. I realized that it wasn't quite good enough to just find the people who were available, in my final task I chose voices who I felt would relate to my target audience but would also sound good and professional. I also noticed the editing was much more smooth and professional sounding in my final task, possibly because it was a longer piece of work.

I found the preliminary task very beneficial and it made the process of the final production much quicker as I had already grasped key concepts of recording and editing before. When I look back to my preliminary task and compare it to my final production I am able to see what a difference a natural sounding script makes, and how important timing is in the sense to make all discussions sound natural instead of forced and scripted. Here is an extract from my final script for my finished show, showing what I learnt from my preliminary task, regarding representation and delivery, particularly how to make it sound natural.  

News correspondent- Author and avid football fan David Cohen, has met with mayor Boris Johnson to talk about his new campaign called score against antiemetiism which aims to get rid of the racist element in football. he is here today to talk to JFM. Hello David,welcome to JFM.    

David- thanks Ariel I'm so happy to be here 

News correspondant- what inspired you to start this campaign? 

David- well I remember when I was about eleven or twelve(reason why he's started now) I went with my dad to see my first spurs match against arsenal. One of the spurs players tackled an arsenal player who fell over. We were sitting next to the away fans and one stood up and shouted 'dirty yid'. My dad didn't seem Bothered by this remark but I was shocked. Being jewish myself I know that people are prejudiced against us, but I never imagined someone would have the nerve to do this! 

News correspondent- but don't you think maybe spurs fans encourage this, I mean, don't they shout the word yid in many of their chants? 

David- exactly, and this is what I'm aiming to stop. By using this word many spurs fans are encouraging other people to behave in a prejudice way. we can't expect people to respect us and not use words like that if we do it ourselves. To be honest only around 20% of spurs fans are actually Jewish? 

News correspondent- So what are you doing to promote this campaign? 

David- well were making our own television advert, the director Jacob levy has expressed an interest in the project so we're very lucky to have him on board. We've got pamphlets and posters around football grounds hopefully making people aware of the campaign. 

News correspondent- thanks for joining us David.

Here are my jingles from both tasks.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

To record we used a 'Shure SM58' microphone. All the editing was done on a PC using the software 'Adobe Audition 1.5' and a mackie mixer.

The software enabled me to use multi track view (this is where users load up the files and layer the tracks) there is an unlimited number of tracks you can layer which was particularly useful when editing my Mitzvah Day news story as it required four different speech parts and two different street sounds. The main purpose of multi track view is to layer tracks and adjust timing and volume.

I also used the blue line in multi track view to adjust the volume on the mitzvah day story as the correspondent, Miriam, was asking questions to members of the public, I turned the volume down at the beginning and end of each characters speech to make it sound as if the microphone was being passed back and forth.
There is also edit view, where a file is loaded up, left and right, you work with it to add effects or change things about it. Equalising is where you affect base, treble or midrange, this proved useful in my community centre story, I accidentally put the word "Millions" in my script without noticing that it sounded unrealistic, I used this to raise the first syllable of the next word "Finchley", so it sounded like the beginning of a sentence. below is what I originally recorded,  Here is what I edited it to be: You can also cut and paste as if in a word file to eliminate mistakes, add or remove gaps, mute breath sounds and background noise so it runs smoothly. You can also affect timing to make it sound more natural. Due to the fact that the programme was mostly based on news, I didn't use many sound effects, I only used four different street sounds (mitzvah day and the community centre stories) and a camera click used in the Simon Kaye advert. However despite not using so many sound effects, working with audio has given me ideas and extended knowledge that has greatly benefitted me with my A2 project.

Audience Feedback

When playing my final project to the same members of my audience that I distributed my questionairre to, most people agreed that my production sounded authentic and would be something they would listen to maybe on the way to work. The majority of people preferred the football story with one person saying "it is not specifically about jewish people so it would be a good discussion topic to talk about with all my friends", they were surprised at how versatile the station was as a whole as although it mainly featured community news it could relate to other potential listeners too. They all felt that I took their advice and suggestions in the questionnaire on board. However some were surprised at the adverts, one member said "I expected the adverts to be extremely Jewish and very cheesy, however when listening to them I realised that even though they would appeal to jewish people, they could also interest other people". Overall the audience were pleased with my production and seemed to enjoy it.

How did you attract/address your audience?

I chose my target audience based on the fact that I wanted my production to be considered unique, and when I began my research I noticed that there was little radio around for people within a Jewish community.

This made it difficult when I was listening to existing stations as it was difficult to find one which was similar to the one I had in mind, due to the fact that my target audience was incredibly specific. I decided to make my station appeal to both genders and a wide age bracket of 25 and over. I created a questionnaire and distributed it to 20 people who all fit the criteria of my target audience, this helped me to see what would appeal to my audience some could put it into my production(the results are in my research and planning).

To target my audience, I tried to make my media product represent the Jewish community in the content, all the news stories related specifically to Jewish people however they weren't too specific that it excludes all other listeners. Below is an example of a story I used which would appeal to many listeners not just Jewish people:




The adverts I made would specifically appeal to Jewish people.


As would the music, most of which were modern takes on traditional Jewish music.



The reason I didn't use the traditional music was because I felt this would completely isolate all other potential listeners. When writing the script I realized that I was writing it too formally, for example writing "you are" instead of "you're" and "I am" instead of "I'm" which really did not make the production sound natural and authentic.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The main body of my target audience consists of people living within a Jewish community. Due to the fact that this is a very specific audience I had to make my station appeal to both males and females with a broad age bracket of 25 years old and over.

From my questionnaire I reached the conclusion that the news which appeals most to my audience is community news. Their listening habits are usually an hour or two of listening, most either at 9-12:30 pm or 4-8:30 pm, which is usually when they take and collect their children from school.  

Here is a link to my blog post about target audience:

Target Audience

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Due to the fact that my station has such a niche audience it is not really similar to any other radio station, with the exception of JCOM (the station I based most of my research around). The only other type of media that would have similar content is possibly newspapers for example the Jewish News or the Jewish Chronicle.

My radio station is a local station, broadcasting in the London area, broadcast on weekdays (there would be no Jewish listeners on Friday or Saturday). Whilst the station is based in London and many of the news stories would be directly relevant to people living in this area, my station may appeal to a broader audiences of members of the Jewish community across the country. As such, my community radio would be available not only on the FM frequency but also on DAB and online, so that members of the Jewish community who live outside of London could tune in.

Here are some links to the research I did regarding Jewish news publications.

Jewish Chronicle Post
Jewish News Post



JFM will be a commercial radio station, funded by advertising. The adverts reflect not only the community I am serving but also give an indication of the genre of my station. It was essential, I thought, to create adverts if I was going to realistically reflect the kind of radio stations I had researched.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The radio programme I created for my AS media production was the afternoon news on JFM. In order to make my radio show sound authentic it was crucial to do some research into existing radio programmes to listen to the structure, content and news stories; making note of the news values and techniques, such as voxpops, outside broadcasts, soundbites and special guests, used in different radio programmes. I also listened to get an idea of regular radio conventions such as adverts, jingles and the use of music and sound effects.

Here are some of the music tracks I used in my radio show. They are authentically Jewish which I felt would appeal to my audience, and was a good way of showing my understanding about representation.





I mainly focused on the stations Jcom of Leeds, as it had the same target audience as me, BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 4. Elements I gathered for my own production were jingles, adverts and various news techniques. When analysing adverts I realised that they all appealed to the target audience of the radio station. This made me aware of how important a target audience is and how it is crucial to make every convention and detail appeal especially to them. They will be expecting very specific representations if they are tuning into a Jewish radio station that represents the Jewish community.

Here is one of my adverts that would only exclusively appeal to my target audience.



I actually found that the best way for me to find adverts appealing specifically to my target audience was to look at the JC (Jewish Chronicle), there I found adverts for things like catering companies and schools, although this was a different media platform to the one I would be creating myself it was very beneficial in terms of adverts, and getting the representations right so that they were appropriate for my chosen demographic.