BBC Radio 1 Xtra

BBC Radio 1 Xtra is a sister station of BBC Radio 1. Similar to Radio 1 it is a digital station and operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). It was founded in August 2002 and it's target audience, again similar to BBCR1 is from the ages of 15-30. Licensed by Ofcom, it renewed its last license in April 2016. This station, unlike it's sister station focuses on more specialist music in the form of urban music. This features other sub genres such as hip hop, RnB, grime, bassline and garage to name a few. (Benoit & O' Donnell 2000) state that "Music is a very important element in radio production; indeed, it can be argued that music is what radio is all about. In any event, it's important for a producer to have an advantage, to manipulate music to create an effect. Good producers can also understand the kinds and varieties of music and thus can fit productions into the stations overall format." This is really evident on this station as it is so specialist. The station has a 0.5% share of the market and the BBC having a share of nearly 50% of the overall radio market. The average listener listens around 5.3 hours a week and they receive around 1.065m listeners a week.

As part of its public service broadcasting remit, the station was required to carry out a certain amount of news, speech and information content and then brought it its own 1Xtra news service. Formerly known as 'TX', 1Xtra News operates as a subsidiary of Radio 1's Newsbeat operations. The station keeps the style of it's news fitting to its target audience too keeping the news young, slightly more upbeat and an urban feel to it too. The station overall has a very urban, young vibe to it aiming perfectly at its target audience. The presenters use words such as "sick" or "phat" to describe music, words that would not be used on a station aimed at the older generation such as BBC Radio 3. The presenting style across the station is very upbeat and lively; the presenters almost shouting with enthusiasm at the listener with specialist music knowledge and content and as a listener, not even a fan of the genre it gets me excited. The music is the heart of the station, so having presenters with excellent music knowledge in the stations specialist genres is vital and you can really see this across the station. The presenting style is similar to BBCR1 where it is a mix of more crunch and rolls and then more lengthy content but the difference with this station is that with it being a more specialist music station the presenters talk more about the music and knowledge in detail.

Also similar to its sister station, BBCR1X also includes Live Lounge features both live on air and uploaded online on YouTube and their website too. I think the Live Lounge is a great feature as it gets people talking when artists they like cover songs listeners would never imagine them covering or when they cover a song a listener has never heard before, it really does get people talking and integrating it online so much too is perfect for its young target audience. The Live Lounge is a really great way the station uses digitalisation and posts small clips of the live lounge across social media platforms to promote the station too. Similar to other BBC radio stations, online presence of the brand is really strong with things such as podcasts and live streams being posted online to listen back whenever you want to.

The station as a whole really covers the genres across the day, all day really well and you can really feel an urban vibe across the station at all times from every small detail such as the presenters, speech style and beds used. The only thing I would change from a programming point of view is maybe to have more specialist shows on an evening as when listening during the day compared to an evening there's not really a huge change in the music at all so I think you should be able to identify specialist shows better. I think overall, its really good to have a station dedicated to this urban style of music which is so popular to British Music culture and clearly is so popular with the listeners too.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra


References

• Benoit, P & O' Donnell, L. (2000) Modern Radio Production. Production, Programming and Performance. 5th Edn. Stamford: Wadsworth