Radio - News and Factual
News and factual programming are both common features within radio production internationally. Although, the case may be that this is more true for the former than the latter.
My own research into news and factual programming on radio stations has shown me that factual programming is definitely heavily featured on public radio, while not as often being found on private and community stations.
The best example of public radio is the BBC, as it is publicly funded. The BBC is funded by a licence fee which consumers pay annually, meaning that as a company, they have more funding readily available, and the demographics and audience research to cater to more niche interests.
As a station, BBC Radio 4 is heavily reliant on factual content. Their factual programming encompasses a wide range of topics and interests and therefore is a perfect example of how public radio tends to have more factual content, whereas community and private stations are more reliant on music to fill air time. Private radio is defined as a company which gets its funding through means such as advertising and is there to make a profit. Community stations are localised broadcasters with a much lower range of broadcast. They also often use advertising to fund themselves, although sometimes are still non-profit.
News seems to be a fairly consistent feature for most stations, be that public, private or community. The style of news programming however, does significantly vary depending on the overall style of the station; for example, BBC Radio 1's news will be very different to BBC World Service. News is typically live and although longer news segments may have been pre recorded, even these are likely to be broadcast the same day. This is because of the ever changing nature of news and the news is likely to change multiple times a day. News broadcasts tend to be shorter in length to factual programming, and occur multiple times a day. Typically a news broadcast will have one or more presenters who will read pre-prepared news stories aloud, with occasional contribution from clips of live or pre recorded interviews etc.
Factual programmes are almost always pre recorded. From my research, I have found that they also tend to be significantly longer, averaging around 30 minutes. Often, like news, factual programmes will have one presenter. There is generally an introduction of what the audience can expect to hear in the rest of the broadcast and outlining the topic which is to be covered.
Although in the programmes I used for research, features such as music beds tend to be used less, these types of programming seem to be less formal, although this obviously depends on the general tone of the individual programme.
Often, there will be contributions from experts on the topic being produced; for example in the factual programme I listen to about the word "Clog", the presenter spoke to one of the few remaining clog manufacturers in the UK.
Although there are many traits which are shared between all factual/news programmes, target audience arguably plays the largest part is shaping the qualities of a speech package.
An example of this is Newsbeat, Radio 1's regular news programme, is aimed at their key demographic of 15-35 year olds. This means that the show is much faster paced than BBC World Service for example, and features like music beds are more common.
BBC world service was much akin to Sky news in many aspects, and out of the news programmes I used for my research, Newsbeat was the one that exhibited most differences. As mentioned before, I think this is due to the difference in target audience.
The Newsbeat programme lasted roughly 15 minutes, and had slightly more in depth reports. The overall feel was significantly less formal and the stories were worded more carefully to be more age-appropriate.
I also noticed that certain terms were explained so as to help a younger audience understand subject specific lexis such as "shadow chancellor". Music beds were used practically throughout, and were changed regularly to keep up pace and fit with the tone of each individual story.
One feature that seemed consistent was that the heavier stories are placed first, followed by sport and finish on a lighter note, with a story of a puppy who saved an old lady's life, for example.
All of the factual pieces seemed to be of a similar length, around 15-30 minutes long each. Formality did, however, seem to vary. For example, the programme I listened to where the presenter attempts to find out 15 things out about a word in as many minutes, was very dry and formal. The programme entitled "23 reasons this programme will change your life" was far more sarcastic and featured more uses of humour. This again, I think, is dependent on target audience.
There are also frequent contributions and interviews from people who are somehow qualified to talk about the subject featured and these tend to be longer clips than they would be in the news. There was one noticeable use of a music bed in the show called "78 revolutions", but for the most part they were unused.
As most of these programmes are featured on the BBC, it is important for them to be unbiased. This is because the BBC is a publicly funded company and therefore has a responsibility to provide unbiased news to the public.
All news and factual programmes alike have some responsibility to be as accurate as possible in their reporting of events or topics.
The same rules apply to these types of programmes as with anything that is broadcast in almost every media sector and will be regulated by the Ofcom code (shown below).
- Protecting under 18’s
- Harm and Offence
- Crime
- Religion
- Due impartiality and due accuracy and undue prominence of views and opinions
- Elections and Referendums
- Fairness
- Privacy
- Commercial References in TV programming
- Commercial Communications in Radio programming
