Tuesday, 7 April 2020

Explain how the radio industry targets audiences. Refer to Late Night Woman’s Hour to support your points. [ 10 marks ] 
Late Night Woman's Hour is a BBC Radio 4 show that is a late night edition of Woman's Hour. The main demographic are females as it is implied in the in the title of the show. The stereotypical audience listener is a middle class woman likely to be over 30 and mothers. This would be due the sophistication of all of the topics that are discussed in the show. There are many ways in which radio industries are able to target their audiences.

One way in which the radio industry targets its audiences is through their choice of presenter on the radio show. In Late Night Woman's Hour is presented by Lauren Laverne on Radio 4. She is known to be youthful and have a reputation for being very outspoken. Laverne is also known as a DJ, model, television presenter author singer and comedian. Due to her being known for all of her jobs, she is able to attract younger female listeners who are interested or are fans of her work. This will also lead to audiences tuning into the show to listen to their favourite presenter which will make them stick around to listen to the show. This also links to the fact that she is associated with BBC Radio 6 where she was apart of an alternative music band called "Kenickie" which appeals to a young audience for a variety of audiences to listen 

Another way in which the radio industry targets its audience is through the topics that they discuss in the show. Late Night Woman's Hour is centred on female topics that women can relate to. For example in the episode "Home", Lauren Laverne discusses the topics of home, hygge and domestic norms. Other topics discussed on the show include things such as: culture, moral issues as well as politics. Due to the main target audience of the programme being female, the programme focuses on more female oriented topics, however, they also talk about broad topics to suit for their niche male audience. The stereotypical listener is mainly interested in topics including affairs, family, home and crafts. This allows a wider range of topics to engage different audiences.

An alternative way in which the radio industry targets radio audiences is through the availability across a variety of platforms. Before the mid 1990s, radio could only be listened to on one platform. Now thanks to things such as digital transmission, many more radio stations can be broadcast to different people. As there has been a change from analogue radio to digital audio broadcasting which allows access to a wider range of audiences. People can also listen to the show on multiple devices such as phones, tablets, laptops and more as people can listen to podcasts live or can download them if the time the show is live is inconvenient. This allows for more people to access the show due to convergence.

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