BBC Radio 1

BBC Radio 1 (97-99 FM) is a British national analogue and digital radio station that has been operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) since 1967. It was initially launched to meet demand for music that was being played illegally via pirate radio stations. BBCR1 is licensed by Ofcom and was last licensed back in December 2016 but then the service licence was reissued in January 2017. This station plays modern music and chart hits during the day and covers specialist areas on an evening from 7pm such as electronic dance, rock, indie, hip hop, exclusive interviews and live streams such as Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds Festival etc.(Benoit & O' Donnell 2000) state that "The primary goals of the on-air producer is to provide programming that reinforces the format and goals of the station. The identifying characteristics of the radio station are encompassed and expressed in what's known, loosely, as the stations sound. The elements of the sound are not only the types of music played. Also dictating the sound are the pace, content, announcing style, and blending of the program sources." So this means the station targets its audience essentially to create the correct sound. The target audience for BBCR1 has remained roughly the same in its 50 years of broadcasting, with it's average listener back in 1967 being 27 years old - the same age as the average age in the UK too. The channel still aims it's station at the same age range of 15-29 years old but in 2008 changed this to 15-33 years old to appeal to a larger audience. The channel also started 2 hour broadcasting in May 1991. BBC Radio 1 has a large market share at 5.9% with the BBC owning around nearly half the radio market share in general. Its average listener listens around 6.3 hours a week and has just under 10 million listeners a week on average too, making it the third most listened to station per week.

BBC Radio 1 also has a feature called their "Live Lounge" and this is really popular. Famous artists either do a live version of their own song or a lot of the time a cover and it is played live on air and then also added online to their website and YouTube too and this creates a lot of social media interaction. 
Speech and information is really important to this station, so making sure the station has a well-known news sector is vital and 'Newsbeat' is both really well-known and the way the news is delivered really appeals to the target audience keeping the language used suited to a more teenage and younger audience and the content kept on topic to what the youth would know more about too. You can really see that the station has a young vibe to it in general with the way presenters talk with phrases such as "sick" and "dench" being spoken, something you wouldn't hear on an older targeted station such as BBC Radio 3. The presenting style all seems really laid back and upbeat with music and entertainment knowledge being key to this station. Links are constructed well with some links being more crunch and rolls with teases to games, interviews or the live lounge for example and then other links are more lengthy and detailed with a lot of heavy content in them. Throughout the show music and entertainment knowledge is evident which is important and this allows the presenters to be able to talk in detail about the topics their listeners want to know more about. You can tell research and producing is done thoroughly too. The station always has world exclusives on the show and this is a huge thing that will really draw in listeners away from competitor stations and draw in new listeners. An example of this is an exclusive Arctic Monkeys interview they have on Thursday 10th May just before they drop their highly-anticipated new album the next day so this would draw away listeners from competitor Global's Radio X.

Radio 1 has so many amazing presenters and features too, as a listener it's personalities and features keep me really hooked and wanting to turn over to this station as soon as I get in the car as I know there will usually be either good music on or a funny feature. Some examples of this include Nick Grimshaw of the Breakfast Show with "Call or Delete", Greg James' "The Going Home Song" and my personal favourite which I want to talk about in more detail, Scott Mills' "Innuendo Bingo." The reason I think this is a fantastic piece of content is the fact that the viewers can be so involved. Radio nowadays can be as much visual as they are aural. This segment is streamed online via the Radio 1 website (linked below) where fans of the contestant or the show in general can look online live in the studio. The clips used as well are sent in by listeners of clips considered to include innuendos from television in the past week, so again another great way to integrate listeners. The clips used are so funny and it really is such a simple format too. The producer (Chris Stark) and the special guest sit opposite each other with a mouth full of water and the aim is to not laugh at the clip and not spit water at each other. It is such as simple format and never fails to make myself and other listeners in the car or room laugh too. 

Online streaming, digitalisation and social media is a real strength of this station. The station integrates these all the time from uploading videos from the live lounge on YouTube to doing a live stream of a feature online to posting tweets of the song currently playing to uploading podcasts too and they do a really good job of this. I think looking at the schedule, the only thing I'd change is a wider selection of specialist shows possibly at the same set time every night each week as the schedule after a certain point in the day each day is a bit all over the place which for a listener might be confusing when the show they want to listen to on an evening starts exactly but overall I think the station is providing the correct music, speech, news and entertainment to the correct age of listeners and they integrate it visually too so well.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1


References

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