Media Industry Evaluation

Radio Evaluation

The radio industry is a sector which has been around for years and there are thousands of stations which consist of talk shows, major events e.g. festival coverage, comedy and general music shows. The first news radio broadcast was in August 1920 in the United States, after this in November the same year they also broadcast the first major sporting event.

To get into the radio industry there are no real qualifications which are involved, the applicants mainly have to have the knowledge of the area and with some radio companies to even get work experience people are advised to offer a CD of there work so that companies can decide if they are good enough for the field of work available. Age range in the radio industry is strictly 18 and over and a lot of the radio companies offer advise on there official websites about job opportunities or how to get about into the vacancies or advise similar roles which develop into getting into the desired job.

There are many jobs in the industry that people can get into such as:

• Programme Controllers
• Producer
• Station Manager
• Journalist
• Reporter
• DJ
• Presenter
• News Reader

These jobs can lead to different job opportunities such as Station Manger being the top end of the job role and the reporter and journalist being the main starting block for most people, there are other roles including editors which help to make the shows all go according to plan, in all there are a variety of roles which the radio industry has and makes it an exciting job prospect.

Some of the major radio stations are:

• BBC Radio stations 1-7 – The BBC has 7 radio stations which are broadcast everyday, there are other digital counterpart stations including BBC 1Xtra which make the total far more, BBC radio started in 1927 and the stations are all based in London.

• Capital FM – Capital FM is a popular London local radio station which is owned by Global Radio it commenced broadcasting on 16^th October 1973 and was launched by Richard Attenborough.

• Absolute Radio – Which was formally known as Virgin Radio was renamed 29 September 2008 the station started broadcasting from 30^th April 1993 it is one of the UK’s 3 Independent Radio Stations, it’s based in London and play’s popular Rock music from 60’s to present day. It’s also owned by TIML Radio Limited.

• Magic – In July 1990 Magic FM started broadcasting, they mainly play music from all styles of genre from early 70’s to present day, The company are owned by Bauer Radio and started off as Melody FM in the early 90’s it rivals Heart FM and Capital Radio.

• Kiss – Kiss FM is a dance and RnB station which is aimed at the younger like BBC Radio 1 does, its based in London and first broadcasted in September 1990.

• Classic FM – Classic FM is another station which is an Independent Radio Station, the name of the station tells you what the style of music is, which is generally classical contemporary music, the station started in September 1992.

Theres alot that makes up the radio sector and this is why i'm very interested in getting into the area of work, many jobs in the various sections are interesting and i would love to get to know radio alot more and learning the different roles which these jobs ask for.