Introduction to Radio

Introduction to radio: blog tasks

Create a new blogpost called 'Introduction to Radio' on your Media 2 Coursework blog and complete the following tasks:

BBC Sounds

Read this Guardian feature on the launch of BBC Sounds and answer the following questions:

1) Why does the article suggest that ‘on the face of it, BBC Radio is in rude health’?

It has half the national market, with dozens of stations reaching more than 34 million people a week. Radio 2 alone reaches 15 million listeners a week and for all the criticism of the Today programme (“editorially I think it’s in brilliant shape,” says Purnell), one in nine Britons still tune in to hear John Humphrys and his co-presenters harangue politicians every week.

2) What percentage of under-35s use the BBC iPlayer catch-up radio app?

Younger audiences are listening to more audio then ever before.

3) What is BBC Sounds?

It will bring radio livestreams, catchup services, music mixes and podcasts together under one roof.

4) How do audiences listen to radio content in the digital age?

Listen to it on their smartphones or tablets.

5) What does Jason Phipps suggest is important for radio and podcast content aimed at younger audiences?

The man tasked with making this work is Jason Phipps, a former Guardian employee who joined as the corporation’s first commissioning editor for podcasts earlier this year. He says there is a need to reconsider the entire tone of how the BBC tells stories, shifting away from rigid formality if it wants to attract the precious under-35 audience: “It has to be a warmer, more story-led journey. You need to report the very personal experience of it.

6) Why does the BBC need to stay relevant?

the BBC was banned from creating online-only podcasts for competition reasons, meaning it is now making up for lost time, Shennan says. To this end a “few million pounds” a year will be given to commission podcasts purely for an online audience.

Now read this review of the BBC Sounds app.

7) What content does the BBC Sounds app offer?

Music, news, drama, documentaries, true crime, comedy – if you want it in your ears, you start with the orange button. The app lets you click through to any live BBC radio station, but it also offers you other forms of listening, from podcasts to playlists.

8) How does it link to BBC Radio?

he app lets you click through to any live BBC radio station, but it also offers you other forms of listening, from podcasts to playlists. You want music to cheer you up? Here’s a big beats hip-hop playlist “to keep you moving”. 

9) What are the criticisms of the BBC Sounds app?

Sounds is easy to use, though I found the programme information a little tricky to access, and the search – as ever with the BBC – isn’t sensitive enough. 

10) Two new podcasts were launched alongside the BBC Sounds app. What are they and why might they appeal to younger audiences?

Beyond Today, presented by Tina Daheley, is an attempt to mimic the New York Times’s successful The Daily programme, and the two shows I’ve heard aren’t bad. The first, about whether the UK has enough money, had too many audio tricks; the second, about an Iraqi Instagram star killed for being too provocative, was very good (though the word “flaunt” should be banned, especially when used to refer to women). It would be nice for the programme to refer to actual breaking news, as in The Daily’s “here’s what else you need to know” end section, but it’s not a bad start. A few days after the Beeb, the Guardian launched its own daily, behind-the-scenes-of- journalism podcast, Today in Focus, which I’ll review next week.

And End of Days, exclusive to the Sounds app, is a gripping tale. I hadn’t realised that many of the Waco cult victims were from the UK, mostly recruited from the Seventh-Day Adventist church. End of Days talks to their families and friends. There are moments when you want more specifics (the first episode is vague as to what David Koresh actually talked about), but it’s a very interesting show.

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean blog tasks

Work through the following tasks to create a comprehensive case study for Michael Jackson's Billie Jean music video.

Media Magazine reading: Billie Jean, birth of an icon

Go to our Media Magazine archive and read the case study on Billie Jean - birth of an icon (MM62 - page 20). Answer the following questions:

1) What was the budget for Billie Jean? How did this compare with later Michael Jackson videos?

The budget for Billie Jean was $300,000; in comparison to ‘Thriller’ it was $2million.

2) Why was the video rejected by MTV?

MTV they refused to air the video, arguing that it didn’t suit their ‘middle America’ audience.


3) Applying Goodwin's theory of music video, how does Billie Jean reflect the genre characteristics of pop music video?

Andrew Goodwin outlines the conventions of promo videos in his 1992 book Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture. He provides a useful framework to begin analysing the video.
Genre Characteristics. The video contains many conventions of the pop genre: lip-syncing, performance interwoven with narrative, dance routines, high-fashion costume. 

4) How do the visuals reflect the lyrics in Billie Jean?

The song is apparently based on Jackson’s experience of fan-girls claiming he or his brothers were the parents of their babies, mixed in with a missing persons story that Jackson had purportedly read in the news at the time. Key lyrics are amplified through the visuals: the song is about a girl, Billie Jean. Although we never see her as a character in the video, we are presented instead with other images suggestive of females in general with whom he never comes into contact – the billboard/ screen with a woman’s face displayed on it, the figure on one side of the double bed at the end. There are more literal links: when Jackson sings the stand out line, ‘Then showed a photo of a baby crying, his eyes were like mine,’ the screen freezes and a frame appears around the artist’s eyes. Elsewhere he does a spin as he sings ‘in the round.’

5) Why does the video feature fewer close-up shots than in most pop videos?

The video assists the star-construction of the artist, not so much through the close-ups that you might expect in other pop videos, but through the focus on the distinctive dance moves (often shown three-fold in the frame) which had not been seen onscreen before. It was shortly after this video was shot that Jackson did the first moonwalk, stunning the audience with his performance of, ‘Billie Jean’ at the legendary Motown 25 concert later in 1983.

6) What intertextual references can be found in the video?

There’s a visual style that begins here, in ‘Billie Jean’, and develops throughout the other promos for Thriller. By the time ‘Bad’ was released in 1987 the King of Pop’s iconic image was cemented in pop-culture history.

7) How does the video use the notion of looking as a recurring motif?

The notion of looking can be seen through the use of the private detective (also an intertextual reference to Noir film and detective fiction). Jackson is being watched and followed; a polaroid camera attempts to capture his image but he’s elusive, mystical. The audience sees his image multiplied using split-screen editing, he is frozen or isolated in a frame-within-a-frame. Towards the end he is spied through a window by an old woman in hair-rollers as he ascends a fire escape to stand, somewhat creepily, at the bedside of a sleeping figure, where he then becomes the voyeur.

8) What representations can be found in the video?

Like most pop music, the narrative element is mysterious; much is left open to interpretation but what
is interesting here is the way that Jackson is beginning to construct a narrative about himself
and establish his identity. What Steve Barron describes as a Midas-touch narrative could, in retrospect be interpreted as the beginnings of the Messiah-complex that Jackson was criticised for later his career. The ‘everything-he-touches- turns-to-gold’ idea in this video is fairly innocuous and it’s sweetly naïve when, in ‘Beat it’, Jackson pops himself between the ringleaders rival brawling gangs, does a little dance singing, ‘it
doesn’t matter who’s wrong or right,’ causing them to come together as a synchronised dance troupe.

Close-textual analysis of the music video

1) How is mise-en-scene used to create intertextuality - reference to other media products or genres? E.g. colour/black and white; light/lighting.

The beginning of the video started of with black and white which creates intertextuality linking with the film noir genre. We can also detect the beginnings of the ongoing theme of being ‘from the streets’. The setting in ‘Billie Jean’ is urban, it is night time, litter blows down dark alleys and fire-escapes. This is the first in a sequence of videos that explored gangs, crime, danger and the supernatural. Although Jackson’s childhood home in Gary, Indiana was more suburban than urban, there’s no denying he grew up in poverty.

2) How does the video use narrative theory of equilibrium?

His narrative of being from the wrong side of the tracks and being ‘not like other guys’ was an important part of his identity, probably throughout his entire career but especially in his twenties. If you have 18 minutes to spare, the extended narrative in Scorsese’s video for ‘Bad’, which depicts Jackson bidding farewell to his Ivy League school mates to head back to the mean streets of his youth, clearly highlights an ongoing identity crisis for this megastar.

3) How are characters used to create narrative through binary opposition?

Rich vs Poor : Michael Jackson

Good vs Bad : The detective

4) What is the significance of the freeze-frames and split-screen visual effects?

The freeze-frames and split-screen visual effects is extremely significant because it suggests that the detective is collecting evidence against Michael Jackson.

5) What meanings could the recurring motif of 'pictures-within-pictures' create for the audience?

The common theme of pictures-within pictures could be proposing that Michael Jackson dependably feels as though he is being viewed and that his protection is being attacked, this is likewise observed through his verses in the song.
6) Does the video reinforce or subvert theories of race and ethnicity - such as Gilroy's diaspora or Hall's black characterisations in American media?

It can be argued that the video somewhat subverts theories of race and ethnicity.

7) Does this video reflect Steve Neale's genre theory of 'repetition and difference'? Does it reflect other music videos or does it innovate?

I strongly believe that this music video reflects Steve Neale's genre theory of 'repetition and difference'

8) Analyse the video using postmodern theory (e.g. Baudrillard's hyper-reality; Strinati's five definitions of postmodernism). How does the 'picture-in-picture' recurring motif create a postmodern reading?

Postmodernists guarantee that we live in a media-soaked world – submerged in media items every minute of every day. To such an extent, that the qualification between this present reality and the media portrayal of this present reality has turned out to be obscured, Using Baudrillard's hyperreality hypothesis, we can express that the music video has been built to mirror the 1940, additionally there are various types of intertextuality inside Billie Jean for example Pastiche is used as the crime noir genre has a serious emphasis.