Unit 9 AO1 Mini Presentation

Unit 9 AO4 Distribution Technology

Distribution Technology

This is about how technology has evolved so that we can have access to radio programmes.

Podcasts are things that an audience will subscribe to. Once they have subscribes, the device they are using searches on the internet for any episodes and automatically downloads them for you.

Radio is moving onto mobile. There are now mobile apps for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry phones where you can download what radio station you want to listen to. This allows listeners to have the radio wherever they are.

People can also get radio as well as BBC stations through their television. If you have Freeview, Freesat, Sky and Virgin Media then you will have access to radio stations through your TV. There will be no picture on your screen, but you will get the sound.

BBC iPlayer can work on a variety of different devices. You can watch it on your TV through a console (Wii, PS3 and Xbox). Most of Apple’s products can go onto iPlayer too. The iPhone, iPod and iPad have their own App for iPlayer, which is mainly to catch up on programmes. There is also another app which is dedicated to radio and allows you to listen to stations live from your phone. SMART TV’s also give you access to the BBC iPlayer.

Sky and Virgin Media have their own Anytime or Catch up applications as well as iPlayer. This gives their customers a wide range of programmes to catch up on. BBC iPlayer has programmes as well as radio stations.

Capital FM

I will be looking at the different ways that Capital FM makes their content available to everyone. I am looking at this commercial station because I have currently been looking at the BBC which is funded by the licence fee payers. I will be looking at this station to see how they make their content available to the public by funding themselves through advertising.

Capital makes their content available to a wide variety of technology. You can listen to the station via FM radio or digital radio. The station is also available on TV. With a Freeview box, you can listen to the station but on Sky and Freesat, Capital has their own channel that plays music videos. This channel is not connected to the radio station.

Everyone can also listen to the station via their phones. Some phones can listen to the radio from a signal that is in the headphones. Other phones like the iPhone, Android or BlackBerry have apps that are connected to the internet streaming the content from the station.

Then again, there is also the obvious alternative to listening to the radio. Capital FM has their own website where you can catch up on the latest programmes or listen live.

Streaming and Download Figures

The BBC has records of how many people stream radio programmes and download podcasts from their website. It is information that is based on the site usage and has information taken only from the UK. Most of this information is conducted through computer IP addresses which all have a regional code that shows that they are within the UK.

Site Usage

This information was recorded by gathering all the IP addresses that went on the iPlayer website that are situated within the UK. These figures are for all networks of BBC’s Radio and Music. The information gathered showed that:

§   In March 2012, 5,284,334 addresses were found to have been average unique weekly browsers’. This information is sometimes counted as two people if a PC and Phone is used because there is two different IP address.

§   In April 2012, 4,752,612 addresses were found to have been the ‘average unique weekly browsers’. This had gone down by 531,722 which means that the number of people using the site has decreased. One of the reasons why this has gone down could be because Easter is second most popular holiday period of the year. That might explain the decrease in listeners.

Radio 1

This station may not be the most popular station out of all BBC Radio, but seem to have the highest monthly live stream requests. These live stream requests are recorded from the amount of people that listen to the radio live online. This is also recorded by any other activity on Radio 1’s section of the website.

The reason why Radio 1 has the most listeners is mainly because of teenagers. They have plenty of access to the internet through computers and their other gadgets. The difference between radio 1 and Radio 2’s websites is immense. Radio one has a scrollable playlist of all the songs they have just played, complete with album art. Radio 2 however, only have 5 different tabs, a link to listen live online and a few links to related content. This shows that there is not much movement on the website and the listeners are not really interactive.

Download and Podcast Figures

Podcasts are short programmes that you subscribe to and receive new downloads for automatically every day or week. Whenever there is a new podcast from the subject or programme you subscribed to, you will automatically receive the new podcasts.

There is also information on the popularity of podcast downloads. From what I can see, Radio 4 has the most downloads. This is mainly because that they are popular for their speech programmes as well as the fact that they don’t play music. Their remit does not contain any music, mainly a mixed speech service. 

Unit 9 AO4 Radio Technology

Unit 9: AO4-Technology in Radio

For this assessment I will be: writing about different forms of radio, then I will be talking about the way radio can be listened to from the way Capital FM chooses to make their station available to their customers. Lastly, I will be looking at the site usage on the BBC radio player.

AM, FM and Digital Radio

PURE is a company that creates digital stations. In order to create the stations and ensure that the digital take over can be done, the digital version of the station has to cover the exact same areas that the FM radio stations had coverage over. When this is then put in place, FM radio will be taken off in two years. This gives enough time for people to prepare from the switchover and replace their analogue radios with digital ones.

Two things that PURE have to do by before deciding to close down FM are:

·      To make sure that at least 90% of the population has digital radio

·      To ensure that 50% of all people listening is on Digital Radio.

This is to ensure that at least half of the population are ready for the switchover. By knowing that at least half of the population are already listening to digital radio shows that they are already prepared for the switchover.

Digital Radio

This form of radio is a lot more compressed than normal radio. Information isn’t sent in waves it is sent in forms of data. These forms of data are compiled into 1’s and 0’s and are read by the radio and put out a higher quality sound.

This higher quality sound means that there are still two different signals coming in but the difference is that one cancels out the information that is not needed so that the final outcome is just pure sound and not interference.

With digital radio, you can forget having to remember the station frequency you are looking for because you will just need to scroll through the station names because the digital radio has already found the stations you can listen to.

Digital Radio Screen displaying Station Name

There is also scrolling text that the station regularly updates telling you the name of the song and artist playing, the website to check out for competitions and many other things like who is coming on the show later on in the day.

Some newer models of Digital radio might even allow you to pause and rewind digital radio. How this is done is pretty simple. When you have pressed pause, the radio is saving what is broadcasting now so that you can listen to it when you press play.

PURE also have their own portable Digital radios that can do more than you think. They may just look like simple portable radios but in actual fact is that you can connect it to you Wi-Fi at home. This will enable the radio to do nothing else but look for radio stations that are all around the world.

DAB+

This is an upgraded version of digital radio that is in some other countries which has a better compression system. Since the UK was the first to change to DAB radio, they won’t be changing to DAB+ anytime soon. Other countries had waited and stayed on analogue radio which is why they could change to DAB+ radio.

One of the differences between DAB and DAB+ radio is that there is no interference. There is also double the sound quality which is why normal DAB systems cannot receive it.

Normal DAB radios cannot adapt to DAB+ radio and this would mean that everyone would have to get new radio systems in order to adapt to DAB+. This is too costly for the UK and would mean that many radio systems would be wasted. Everyone has already got used to using DAB radio; it would be a bit too much to ask for if the radio industry wanted to change again.

Unit 9 AO3 Legal & Ethical - Agencies

RAB (Radio Advertising Bureau)

This is an organisation made to represent all commercial radio stations in the industry. They help encourage businesses to use radio to advertise their products to their audience. They do this by using their:

Radio Gauge- This puts together effective information about a stations audience and measures the data so that the client sees how reliable and effective radio advertising really is.

Case Studies- More in depth information about how Radio advertising actually does work for businesses and is a successful method to promote products and services.

With their experience they even offer businesses help with their radio campaign. This helps the businesses bring out their ideas so that they can pitch their product to the listeners with really creative ideas.

Radio Centre

Also merged with the RAB, Radio Centre and RACC are all companies that work together to protect commercial radio and get it to work at its best. By working together, the impact is bigger and the companies can all work together in order to bend rules so that commercial radio can still achieve its aims.

This gives UK commercial radio a voice that is able to work with the government so that they have the ability to campaign for changes in the government policy that affect radio. The term for this type of campaigning is called lobbied. The reason why the industry seeks to regulate itself is so that it is protected from going against the rules in radio. By having their own regulators, they have

The RC also promotes commercial radio and ensures that they don’t break rules. Since commercial radio need to advertise in order to get money to fund the station, it is vital that their adverts must abide to the rules.

Commercial stations though that it was unfair how BBC stations can just casually mention companies on their stations without getting paid. Commercial stations won’t be getting as much businesses coming to them to advertise if the BBC is offering to do something similar for free.

The RACC are a company linked to Radio centre that checks adverts for different radio stations. This company checks adverts to see if they comply with the rules about adverts on radio so that the radio stations are not breaching any advertising laws and are confronted my advert regulating agencies.

CAP- (Committee of Advertising Practice)

This is the company that is working with the ASA to ensure that their advertising codes are being followed. CAP created the code which stated that all adverts must be Legal, Decent and Honest. The ASA work by these rules regulating broadcasting and non-Broadcasting companies to make sure that CAP’s codes are being followed.

CAP has two different advertising codes. These are for Broadcasting and for Print. They both have to be Legal, Decent and Honest but because there are two different forms of advertising, the rules have been changed to apply to that type of advertising.

ASA- Advertising Standards Authority

Working by the rules that CAP dictate for them to regulate by, this company works with TV and radio advertising. The ASA enforces all the rules and makes sure both TV and Radio advertisements are Legal, Decent and Honest. The ASA also deal with complaints about advertisements that breach their terms and decide sanctions for the channels that showed the advert and the company that made it.

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PRSformusic.com

This is a company that arranges for commission to be collected by businesses that use music in their environments. In order to play music in a shop you need to be issued with a licence that you have to pay regularly for. The reason why this company has been put in place is because the artist and producer are not getting paid for their music being played in public places which is why it is important that they get paid for their music being used for business purposes.

The licence has been put in place so that music that is used can be paid for.

You need to have licences to play music on Radio, TV channels, in Businesses and in a workplace. Places like hospitals, retail stores and restaurants also need to have a licence to play music. Without the licence, these businesses can be issued with a fine and be told to pay for a licence on a regular basis.

The money is paid to the writer, performer and composer and music publisher members. The Company only takes a small commission fee in order to cover operation costs.

Music Returns- This is a record from licence fee holders which states where they have used music within their business. For Radio, they will need to record the songs that they have played and the songs that are played with adverts or idents. Most of this information has been taken down by their computers, but it is important that the information is recorded which is why some stations white it out by hand as a back-up.