Brief summary of activity
Trainer will play a series of short recordings and ask participants to identify different radio features that they correspond to.
Aim of the activity
Participants will learn to identify radio features, their purpose and content.
Expected Outcomes
At the end of the activity, participants will be able to:
- Understand different radio features
- Describe the various types of features according to production features and content
- Understand the purpose of each radio feature.
Experience and skills required
Facilitation skills.
Infrastructure, setting, resources
Playback device, room, seats, flipchart/laptops.
Length
90 minutes
Material
Audio files of programme excerpts
Please note that you should select a excerpt of audio for each of the programme genre that gives an example of a different production feature.
For example:
- The Intro to a Sports Programme
- Back-credit for a music track in a Music Programme (ie. And that was “Heroin”, a song by The Velvet Underground, released on their 1967 debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico)
- News Bulletin in a current affairs magazine show
- Vox Pop in a Special Interest Programme
- Sound effects in a Radio Drama
- An On-Location interview in a Documentary (ie. Out of the studio)
- Short audio segment from the opening of a magazine-style show on the station. This segment should include the Intro, and a couple of other features (short interview, vox pop, news bulletin, link etc.)
How the activity should take place
Trainer puts up list of Production Features on flipchart/or read them:
- Programme Intro,
- Programme Outro
- Pre-recorded on-location Feature package
- Phone Interview
- Programme Sting
- Music tracks
- Sound Effects
- News Bulletin
- Vox Pop
- Back-Credit
- Theme music
- Link
- ad break
Trainer plays the different recordings and ask the participants to identify each track with one of the features in the list, and ask them why do they believe this to be right. Is it the music, the content, the delivery?
Divide the participants in pairs/small groups. Ask them to make a list of all the features/ingredients they would find in their given programme format. TRainer leads a discussion of the features identified by the groups – collect the identified features for each programme genre on the flipchart.
Then ask them to improvise
- Programme Intro – intro content of show
- Programme Outro – wrap up show, trail next show
- Pre-recorded on-location Feature package – in-depth coverage of important event
- Phone Interview – get expert analysis on issue
- Programme Sting – remind listeners what they’re listening to, give sense of style of show
- Music tracks – central to music show, break in a talk-based programme
- Sound Effects – radio drama particularly for setting scene, setting scene in documentary too possibly
- News Bulletin – to update on sports, current affairs or community news
- Vox Pop – to get opinions of people in the community
- Back-Credit – to let listener know what they were just listening to
- Theme music – to mark the opening of programme
- Link – to intro what is to come in the next segment of programme
Recommended max. number of participants and trainees to trainers ratio
10
For Vision Impaired/blind participants and people with learning difficulties: 4-1 participants to trainer
Analysis and evaluation
At the end of the activity:
- Can participants identify different radio features?
- Can they describe the various types of features according to production features and content?
- Do they understand the purpose of each radio feature.
Scheduling
Before or alongside Planning a radio programme, Programme features/genres.