Informing and planning – Research

For further research into what people like in a radio station, I made a more advanced questionnaire to give to people to ensure that I know as much as I can in what people want, I created another 30 questionnaires which were a more detailed version of my first questionnaire, the results were helpful and helped me learn a great deal.
The people who took the questionnaire were between the ages of 15-30, this was because the radio station is aimed for people around this age range, luckily a very high majority of the people who took the questionnaire listened to the radio and listened to it all the time, but it doesn’t mean the people who don’t listen often should be ruled out as it is good to have inputs from people will different opinions as the radio station should be made for non-frequent listeners as well as heavy listeners. Almost everyone said they would be interested in a new radio station except for 2 people.
As we are linking are station to the likes of ‘Heart’ and other similar Radio stations, it was good to know it was one of the radio stations that get listened to a lot and it was peoples favourite, which means if we create one to be similar it has a high chance to be popular. We wanted to add some more music genres to ours such as Dubstep and more RnB to gain people who like different music, which was good as these two genres gained high votes in the question asking about peoples preferred genres, the other high results were indie, Rock and pop which was extremely good as these were the ones which we wanted to refer with ‘Heart.’
The main purpose of this Radio station apart from the music is news, unfortunately only 2 people voted for news being the reason they listened for music, but I considered this before the questionnaire was given out as Radio is made for music, so when it comes to creating the News section, research and planning should be taken into news to make it as clear, entertaining and interesting as possible so more people listen to it and people from different backgrounds listen to it. Not many people like listening to people talking according to the results, so this means planning should be considered when it comes to the interviews and news section due to people getting bored and not paying attention.
More people preferred an upbeat presenter instead of a slow and relaxed, this could be due to the fact that people like to be interested if they have to listen to the presenter, no one wants to be bored during these shows so this would be a good reason, it was close between the fact that people would prefer a man or woman, it seems to show more people are not bothered about the gender, as long as they are fun, interesting and keep the listeners entertained.
Not many people wanted to take part in competitions, which is completely understandable, due to the fact they did not want to lose out on money, the people who said ‘yes’ said its good fun as the presenters are friendly and you have a good time trying to win prizes. On the other hand, people like to listen to podcasts from the radio station on shows during the day they might have missed, so after peak times our Radio could include a podcast so people can stayed tuned throughout the day when they don’t have access to a radio. People tend to listen to the radio around more in the mornings and afternoons as opposed to the evenings, also the high majority listen on the way to a work place, In a car, these times could link to this due to the fact they could start and finish work around these times, I class these as the ‘peak times’ of radio.
These ‘peak times’ could mean in the morning would be tired and would like something to perk them up, people said their mood changes their feel for music, so in the morning more happy and upbeat songs could be played to help start the day off well and towards the afternoon more calmer songs. This would be a good thing to look into during planning.
Finally, people who took the questionnaire were asked about different radio names, another high majority answer meant that ‘Radio Fresh’ won everyone’s approval, this will be considered in further planning too.