RADIO ONE AUDIENCE ESSAY

How is BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show reaching, targeting and encouraging audience interaction?

The BBC Radio One Breakfast show uses numerous media forms and fun, games to target, reach and enforce an audience - of ages 15-35 to interact and become a part of their business. The breakfast show is the most well-known and loved as the audience appreciate the effort the BBC make to ensure they listen in.

Radio one is known for its innovative ways of reaching the largest possible audience including their uses of social media to encourage the younger proportion of their audience that are most likely to be on social media applications or YouTube in the mornings. They tweet and broadcast attractive headlines highlighting what the morning breakfast show will include, ensuring they include the celebrity feature and interactive 'Call in' games as these are entertaining for their audience. By creating Instagram, Twitter, YouTube etc. accounts they involve the audience in what happens within the broadcast which encourages them to listen in case their confession or input is mentioned. Radio One have a following of almost 50K and Greg James alongside with 1.5M. They use both accounts to promote the breakfast edition which will again, broaden the millennial audience that use it and see the posts. The interactive 'comment', 'like' etc. options prompt the audiences to interact with the show and talk to the crew.

They have also incorporated YouTube within their intention of reaching a wider audience as the radio one breakfast show is filmed within the studio which gives the visual, along with audio, aspect of the whole experience. Their short, edited clips show the fun atmosphere within the studio and their inside, work jokes are entertaining for the younger proportion of the audience. Along with this, they use hashtags to create trends and word of mouth making the radio more talked about amongst their followers and to gain more.

Another significant way that BBC radio one reach and target the audience with interactive methods is by their well-known little games and trends that include the audience. An example would be the comical '#PassThePasty' game where a caller claimed never to have eaten a Cornish pasty. So the aim was to travel the pasty across England by passing it to the various participators that were willing to travel some mileage in order to eventually get the infamous pasty to her. Strategically, this created much media attention to a point where there were celebrities intrigued to see if the pasty had got to her yet! Celebrity endorsement was a factor with the spread of the game as they would tweet about using the hashtag which would encourage their fans to then follow the radio to keep updated. With more and more of the country learning about this event, more people were encouraged to listen in to see the progress of the pasty until it finally reached its destination.

Finally, the presenter, Greg James plays a large part in the audience attraction as he is a young, upbeat, middle-class man with a sense of humour and a relate-able mindset in the mornings that the audience empathise with, if the audience did not like the presenter then there would be no show to interact with as this is a key aspect of the radio - especially for the target audience of 15-35 year olds. The audience calling feel that they know Greg James as they have been listening to him for a significant period of time and as he converses with the general public on a day to day basis, they feel at ease speaking with him which makes him a joy to wake up to.

In conclusion, i feel the BBC Radio one breakfast show have ensured they are trying all means to target, reach and interact with their target audience in order for them to continue to be a success. Reaching a widespread, millennial audience, by using Twitter, Snapchat etc, and incorporating entertaining, interactive games with the all ages, whilst still maintaining the informative and educational intentions of the showhas had a massively positive impact on the show, as it continues to grow.


















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