Week 5 lecture - radio

I personally found it difficult to feel engaged in this week's lecture, probably because I am mainly a visual learner. However I do appreciate the fact that they used the podcast as the relevant medium for this week's lecture.

The speaker described radio as a more intimate medium than television, which you watch and control from a distance. He went on to explain that with radio you are often multitasking while listening to it, so the radio seems to come from inside your head, as if it is your own thoughts. That is why it is important for radio speakers to make the listener feel included in the conversation.

Other points that were told were important in radio presented were to give the guest space to talk and explain themselves, and not to bombard them with questions.

One of my favourite radio stations to listen to is Triple J, especially when they have their ask science questions segment. You get to hear and learn about a whole lot random science facts in a whole lot of fields and it is really interesting. However there are a whole lot of people who would find that extremely boring to listen to, which I think is why digital radio is such a huge thing. With so many different channels radio is becoming personalised. Tailored to the individual. Like a lot of media.

Radio is a lot about keeping connected to the outside world. It is a type of media that we are (legally) able to take part in while driving. Other points I found interesting was when the speaker said that as a journalist you have a sense of public service; you feel like you have to share information with the public to make them aware of issues that will affect them. He also stressed that on radio, your annunciation does matter, and you need a wide vocabulary to describe things that are happening to become a successful radio journalist. This kind of makes me think I need to read a bit more to expand my vocabulary and practice speaking clearly. 

One thing I have always disliked about radio is that often the content wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear, and I have often thought to myself, if I had a radio station I would talk about ... However, in this lecture I learnt that it is not about me, but about what the audience wants to hear. Just because I don't like listening to it doesn't mean that the population shares my opinions. Another interesting point that I hadn't really thought about is the idea that on radio you don't have pictures or videos or any visual distractions, so you really have to be careful what you say because the listener will take it all in.

So to sum up, although I didn't like how this week's lecture was presented, there was A LOT of interesting and practical content.