Radio Newsday 17.02.10: Talbot FM.

Similar to Fire Radio, Talbot FM has a much younger target audience of 16-30 year olds and covers the South East Dorset area; factors which we considered throughout our broadcasts. Fire Radio has a relatively young audience and the news they broadcast is typically aimed at young people, concerning topics like music, graduate jobs and items which will impact on young people. As editor I started the day by assessing news worthiness of ideas, delegating stories and organising the running order. Good quality news must be relevant to listeners so we localised the national stories and included some local stories, such as the re-launching of a community project, the protest on the Wessex Way, and road works on the A338.

Considering the young target audience, a story concerning the Brit awards would be entertaining. It is important to draw the listener in immediately, therefore we took a fresh angle on this story and looked at how the awards had affected album sales rather than simply list who won what at the ceremony, which other local radio stations were doing. Similarly, the McQueen inquest would have been interesting to fashion students, and we spoke to the design school at Bournemouth Arts College University to localise the story.

Most of our stories in this first bulletin were local or national with a local angle, for example the national unemployment figures were broken down regionally. One of the BBC’s fundamental editorial guidelines is accuracy; therefore we checked the stories we used were correct using many reliable sources and verified facts by using official unemployment figures.

We were fully prepared for our first broadcast; the bulletin was presented clearly and we did not encounter any problems. We had a few voice clips and sports news included in the broadcast. Overall I was very pleased with this bulletin:




In preparation for the second bulletin, I made sure that stories were already lined up before 11:00 for the 12:00 broadcast so that we were not rushed or left without stories. We changed the running order by including different stories; we decided to drop the council story in particular because there were no developments. However, Edward Sherry from BBC Solent recommended that in a professional radio newsroom, most big stories would be carried through all bulletins, because audiences tend to only listen for a certain period of time and may miss other bulletins. In future, I shall make sure that headlining stories are carried through.

The bulletin included two new clips which were edited in time for the broadcast, and new local sports stories. Our feedback was very positive; Edward complimented the writing style of the traffic stories which I had written, and praised the presenting and time keeping:



Fortunately, our 1pm bulletin was longer so we could include more stories. This bulletin was also successful; it included a variety of stories, either new or ones we had used previously which were re-written with a fresh angle. Again, we had fresh clips and a voice piece:



All three news bulletins were successful because they were well planned, presented well, included a variety of stories and had plenty interesting, appropriate clips. In future bulletins, I will ensure that there is more continuity throughout, for example, using the same introduction, especially stating the time. Edward also stressed the importance of signing off effectively to make the listener want to listen to the next bulletin, which I will consider in future.