BBC Radio 1 question plan- 2/6/2020

Explain how popular music radio programmes target, reach and maintain a variety of audiences. Refer to The BBC Radio One Breakfast Show to support your answer. (15)

PLAN

• Macro 
• Answer the question- who are the audience? 
• Maintain audience with show's content 
• Economic and cultural contexts 
• Conclude 

WHAT I COULD INCLUDE FOR MACRO:

• UK radio industry is dominated by private and public radio stations- Private is dominated by Global who owns stations such as Capital  FM and Absolute Radio. Public is dominated by BBC who owns 11 national radio brands. 
• BBC public service broadcaster. Funded through TV license. 
• Due to BBC being a PSB they need to meet OFCOM's requirements such as nurturing UK talent, addressing social issues and educating their audiences. 
• Rethain values: Inform, educate, entertain. 
• Due to BBC not being profit driven like commercial radio stations, it must maintain audiences without doing traditional commercial methods- they can't give away big amounts of money.

WHAT I COULD INCLUDE FOR WHO THE AUDIENCE ARE: 

• Radio 1's target demographic are 15-29 year olds. This demographic only make up 29% of listeners in the radio industry due to this generation Z audience being more interested in their own created playlists on providers such as Spotify or Apple music. 
• A way that Radio 1 has tried to appeal to this technological advanced target group is by creating a BBC sounds app launched in 2018- listeners can listen on their phones and listen to the 'best bits' of the breakfast show from previous days and listen to other BBC produced content. 
• BBC Radio 1 created a series of above the line marketing ads which showed the importance of their listeners to their radio show as the adverts were created by what viewers had suggested. The campaign was shown across the BBC's TV stations due to the vertically integrated nature of the BBC. 

MAINTAINING AUDIENCE THROUGH THE SHOW'S CONTENT: 

• Large presence on social media and have a 3 million following on Twitter. 
• Greg James increased listeners by 500,000 since joining in 2018. 
• RAJAR statistics for first quarter of 2020 show BBC R1 Breakfast to be the only leading breakfast show to have increased its listeners. 
• Greg included fun segments on the show including 'what's my age again?' along with celebrity guests such as Chris Martin, Stormzy and Sam Fender. 
• In an aim to meet the USP of music streaming sites such as Apple music, BBC Radio 1 Breakfast carries out a 10 minute takeover in which listeners chose the songs in which they want played- like they do with their own playlists. 

ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS:

• Due to being a PSB, BBC does not depend on commercial revenue. 
• It has resisted calls for it to be privatised as their were complaints from some of the public that their license fee wasn't being spent well. It resisted these calls as it doesn't fall into the capitalist free market of the rest of the industry. 
• It is more focused on pop music than cultural content such as BBC 3 and 4, which makes some of the public view it as less important. 
• But a recent search showed that only 10% of Radio 1's content can be heard on competitors stations- therefore allowing the station to maintain its audience by providing new and exciting content. 

CONCLUSION (SUMMARISE POINTS FROM PARAGRAPHS) 

• Maintained audience through target advertising, placing audience at the heart of their content, and embracing social media. 
• James's own personality maintains the audience and has allowed the show to target new listeners. 
• Through using technology such as the BBC Sounds App the show has been able to maintain and reach new audiences.