ThrowBack Thursdays is a radio show that focuses on playing early 2000's songs that resonate and create nostalgia for their 18-25 female audience, the late night timing of the programme is purposefully planned to enable the show to target the large student population in Sheffield.
By specifically playing music from the 2000's era I think this gives the programme a really unique selling point and perfectly targets the audience who know these songs well however don't necessarily hear them on a regular basis that they would do with pop songs played on flagship breakfast shows.
The show is hosted by two girls who are both in the target audience age range, by having the hosts of the show being so similar to the target audience this allows them to be extremely relatable, this is also enforced by the topics spoken about and the informal language that is carried throughout the show. By having the hosts address the audience as 'hun' or use colloquial phrases such as 'omg yes that sounds amaze' gives a very relaxed and natural conversation appearance, this informal peer to peer language was placed to create friendship styled interactions between the hosts and the listeners and create atmosphere of a very friendly and supportive community.
I think the chattiness of the hosts throughout the show really helps establish the target audience and the atmosphere of positivity and friendship throughout, this I think is entertaining and relaxing for the audience to listen to as well as creating a very strong and loyal listenership due to the personal interactions.
In planning for the show I tried to ensure that all topics that the hosts spoke about flowed and resonated with the listeners either on a location basis or by their interests, I think the angle of the conversation between the two hosts was informative for the audience and if any listeners were new to Sheffield i'd like to think they learnt about upcoming Sheffield events such as Tramlines or local business such as Meadowhall.
However if I was to write the script again I would reduce the number of songs as I think as the hosts were getting into speaking on the topic they would have to introduce a new song and this I think interrupted the flowing conversation between the hosts making it quite jolted throughout in that respect.
As researched in LO1, we have established very clear conventions that are present in nearly all radio shows these being elements such as news segments and adverts.
In ThrowBack Thursdays it features a 20 second news feature however this I think is one of the weaker points of the show due to the news articles spoken about aren't very relative to the audience or their interests.
The headlines that were spoken about were very political or serious and even though this is common for news headlines and does still deliver an aspect of surveillance for the listeners, I think I could've focused more on news that would've been more relatable to the audience in according to their geographic location or their interests e.g speaking about more Sheffield based news or university strikes.
Another convention I followed very closely was the station jingle, a jingle is a way to audibly represent a brand, by having key sounds and linked phrases that are played in often intervals people know what station their listening to and what kind of show they expect to hear.
I wanted my jingle to include my slogan which indicated the type of music that would be played, the phrase that was used was 'Back to Back ThrowBacks', the repetition of the word 'back' not only signifies the period that the music is from but also connotes a non-stop stream of music that will be played.
As part of our programme I ensured to incorporate often interactions with the audience this was done through social media and phone calls, by having this constant interaction with the listeners it allows their input on topics and geared towards their interests and opinions.
This is a strong convention in radio as it allows a range of opinions and topics to be shared this keeping the show entertaining and not all directed by the hosts as this can come across as too structured throughout, often phone-ins are used on more dialogue led shows such as TalkSport.
To add a competitive element into the programme the audience had the chance to win a Tramlines ticket if they could correctly name a 2000's song and artist, by giving the audience this chance to win tickets to such an infamous Sheffield event not only promotes the festival but supports independant businesses in doing so this being a positive attribution and fitting the brief set by Sheffield Live.
Overall I think this is one of the best sections in the show, the tension created by whether or not the caller will guess correct enables the show to be super entertaining and adds an intellectual puzzle (Rick Altman) for the audience to enjoy as well as the hosts dialogue and music being played.
The overall audio of the show is one of the biggest concerns that I feel surrounding the show, due to the Covid-19 circumstances that occurred during the point of filming it left me having to use an Iphone instead of the sound booth originally planned.
I think this is quite clear as in some sections in particular you can hear that one of the hosts is holding the phone and is therefore a lot louder and drowns out the second host, I tried to combat this by splicing the dialogue and lowering or heightening the volume in accordance but this wasn't viable to do the whole programme.
However despite the hosts audio being unbalanced I think the overall show does sound well created, the varied volumes of the layered audios e.g the bedding music, adverts and jingles creates a continuous flowing programme that is enjoyable to listen too.
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