RAJAR figures

The RAJAR figures have been announced today and overall show a decline in radio audiences over the summer. Of course this can be described as usual as people are away on holiday and people who use their radio to wake them up and keep it on while they are getting ready for University/work might no longer need it during the summer as they are off but as the latest figures show we have not reached the point of the death of radio and I doubt we ever will.

A background article for how the BBC radio are doing can be found here and shows that even the BBC radio stations have dipped, not good news as someone who does a radio show but as I am on a journalism print route I'm not as affected by this news as I could be.

John Plunkett, on the Guardian Unlimited website, tells us how BBC radio FiveLive and radio Four have also suffered.

I regularly listen to the manchester branch of this station when back at home and am slightly surprised to see it has lost audiences, I say only slightly, due to the XU interactive feature instead of DJ's. In principle it's a good idea but something about it just isn't quite there at the moment but it may be the future.

Something else that was the future now seems to be the present as digital listening has increased as 15% of radio listening is now via a digital platform as it explains here and here.

In such a saturated market already with such competition and the need to capture and keep an audience listeners are constantly experiementing and the nationals seem to be leading the way over locals as Daniel Farey-Jones writes.

Just one example of how people see Radio nowadays can be found on a blog here. Now I am not the most avid radio listener but with other technologies like iPod's and MP3's and even CD's then people can download the songs they like best and have them on wherever, at home or in the car, on the way to work etc so one song that someone doesn't like and wham! the radio is off or the station switched - hey, I am as guilty for that as most people.

In today's world we need to be gripped and stay gripped, after all Radio seems to have the tag for being something we do while we're doing something else but it still plays a big part in our consumption of the media and long may it continue in my view.

As long as people keep listening to the radio as I have a work experince placement on the news team of a local station in the new year so it needs an audience!

Blog of the Week

Guess that would be one of the problems of modern technology then? The site has been down for a bit now and all our blogs have been unaccessible. Just goes to show if we rely on something too heavily and it crashes... as the guy said in the Future Lecture on Thursday.

Anyways, monday was the day of health and Safety questions which we had to do on WEB CT (or E-Learn as its now known) and thankfully it all went just fine while Shorthand was picking up the pace towards the test on Friday.

Tuesday shorthand again was reviewing and preparing for the test while the afternoon class was called off.

Wednesday = enough said. Nothing to do with journalism but any football fan will know what I am referring to so lets not dwell on that subject.

I also rang a placement contact with non of the suggestions on the list near me only to find the person I need to speak to is off ill so a follow up phone call is needed.





Thursday, our busiest day, saw Delwyn look over the feature ideas, tell us the deadline and explain more about the work ex placements we have to do which are coming up in a month or so. In Quark we got a very useful handbook guide with the shortcuts and I am sure most of us will find that we are needing it when we have to design the pages. The guest lecture for Future of Journalism ended the day on a high note as well with some thought provoking content delivered in a relaxed atmosphere, I have to admit I've never thought of my phone as a journalistic tool.





Friday was the day of the Shorthand test and we all wait with baited breath until Monday to see if we move up or down or stay in the same place.


It also saw the "lively" debate in PA on our monarchy and quite a few people had things to say re: that subject and I'm sure it will be raised again in feature classes.



Saturday, England lost the Rugby :( but before that I have now made notes from quite a few books for my Future Assignment and will start writing that very soon...



Sunday saw me work on my feature, refresh my memory with Shorthand (just on the VERY remote chance I go up a group) and watch Lewis Hamilton lose in the Grand Prix.



Hopefully next time I blog the week England or anyone representing the country will not be doing anything. Football, Rubgy and Lewis Hamilton all lost and I am sure other sports suffered the same fate.