Explain how popular Music radio programmes target, reach and maintain a variety of audiences. Refer to the BBC1 Breakfast Show to support your answer (15)
The Uks radio industry consists of the private sector and the public sector which is controlled by the BBC. The BBC is a huge PSB which has 11 national radio brands. With the BBC being a PSB, it meets values such as inform educate and entertain. BBC takes these values seriously because they aren’t profit driven which means they have to use traditional methods to maintain their audiences.
Radio 1 is extremely challenged with maintaining audiences due to their typical audience being aged 16-29 years old. People in this age group don’t tend to listen to much radio due to them being more focused on modern methods of entertainment such as personal music playlist on apps such as Spotify. BBC have tried to integrate modern playlists into their sounds app to try and maintain their audience however, they tend to be too late when it comes to trains. Also, Greg James has campaigned in order to present to people how radios success depends on its audiences. This Is why Greg James tries extremely hard to encourage younger audiences to listen to the radio.
Radio 1 do a good job at maintaining their audience by being large on social media. Radio 1 Breakfast show is present on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. They snip up clips from their radio show into highlights and upload them onto their YouTube channel to provide short bursts of entertainment which helps maintain their audience. Greg James plays a massive role in maintaining their audience due to his friendly approach to the show. Implementing fan based segments such as the ten minute takeover also saw huge bonuses for the show. He talks to the audience as though they are friends and doesn’t flaunt his celebrity lifestyle like Nick Grimshaw did. Because of this, the Radio 1 Breakfast show has seen a listenership increase of 500,000 since Greg James took over the show.
Overall, the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast show has made the audience the centre of their concentration and uses targeted advertising in order to attract and maintain their audience. Greg James has also massively helped the Breakfast Show and has boomed the stations social media which has attracted a younger audience to the show.
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