A rádio que temos

“Every week GWR speaks by telephone to hundreds of people, aged om 20 to 34, about their musical tastes. Each respondent is asked to identify their current musical preferences from a shortlist of musical ‘clusters’, and then asked for their opinions on a list of current songs. The learning from this ongoing research helps in the construction of our group playlists” (informação oficial do grupo GWR [em Maio de 2005 o GWR fundiu-se com a Capital Radio e deram origem ao grupo GCap Media], apud Fleming, 2002: 16/17).

“The playlist determines what will be played, and how often it will be played. (…) In any event the selection of music is not down to personal taste but is a professional judgement that takes into account a variety of factors including the station’s target audience, how appropriate a particular track is to certain times of the day, and often whether or not it has ’scored’ well in audience research” (Fleming, 2002, 54)

“(…) there is little to distinguish the output from Plymouth or Derby except the occasional local accent and the content of the news: the schedule, playlists and style of presentation are the same across the whole group. Moreover, as the format of large groups like GWR is seen to bring in revenue, other smaller stations are influenced by it and adopt it in the hope of increasing their listeners which they then ’sell’ to advertisers. The result is that radio all begins to sound the same and as a medium its potential to inform and entertain other than through music is being ignored outside the BBC”.
(Fleming, 2002: 11)

[Os meios de comunicação social são muito importantes para a nossa sociedade e uma das razões é porque são “The source of an ordered and public meaning system which provides a benchmark for what is normal, empirically and evaluatively; deviations are signalled and comparisons made in terms of this public version of normality” (Denis McQuail, 1994: 1, apud Fleming, 2002: 12).

” (…) as the managing director of Leicester Sound, Phil Dixon, explains: «That sort of age group is very aspirational for the age group both above and below it. The younger ones want to be it and the older ones like to think they’re still a bit trendy and young. It all comes together in that age bracket and that’s the age we target. They’ve got money to spend and advertisers want them to spend it with them, so from a revenue/business perspective it’s important because that’s what advertisers want».” (Fleming, 2002: 10)

«More radio stations do not necessarily bring about more choice for listeners and sometimes the only way to distinguish between one station and another is the station ident (the jingle that identifies the station with its name and frequency). The majority of stations in Britain follow a very similar format dominated by music” (Fleming, 2002: 6).

(estatisticamente, nunca houve tantas rádios como nos últimos anos; de acordo com a atribuição de licenças)

“Radio is big business and, while the number of stations continues to grow, there is increasing consolidation with groups buying out small independent stations which then adopt the group’s format. This is leading to a homogenisation of the sound of radio with ‘local’ stations controlled from group headquarters rather than the place their audience is based.” (Fleming, 2002: 10)