Radio Unit - Lesson 2

Late Night Women's Hour - Criticisms

• Boring and dull.

• Show has an extremely middle class focus due to the topics (Hygge).

• There is an all female panel so this show could be seen as sexist.

• The show is not relatable to the majority of the audience due to the topics (IKEA).

• They make out IKEA is too common which makes them come across as pretentious.

• 'A winter mug' isn't relatable to the audience.

• There is an obsession with the danish and scandinavian culture which is quite a middle class thing to aspire to showing the cultural capital. Therefore again not being relatable to the audience.

• The way they talk about food and somewhere to live they talk like its an adventure whereas to other people (the audience) see food and a house as essential so they are out of touch with the panel.

• The BBC has a remit (something they must do) which is a legal obligation themselves to create a diversification of media output. 

• The BBC have a remit to show diversification in media outputs. (example: Jeremy Clarkson being kept on Top Gear for so long due to him showing that the BBC weren't bias to the left wing as Jeremy Clarkson was a far right wing person it appealed to more audiences)

• The BBC is a public broadcasting service (PBS) so they need to appeal to every single audience.

• The BBC were cutting costs so they sold Great British Bake Off which they got heavily criticised because of it.

• The BBC is an institution that has certain cultural capital.

• BBC is paid for by the people.

We are discussing an oppositional reading, what has been written above isn't the dominant ideology and shows how audiences can have different perceptions and readings of the producers imposed ideology (Reception Theory - Stuart Hall)

How have digital platforms changed the way we consume radio?

• You can now listen to radio on your phone through websites.

• Podcasts on youtube/Spotify.

• DAB radio in cars - more popular than FM/AM.

• Apps for some radio shows.

• BBCSounds

• Podcasts allow you to skip to the parts you want to. Don't need to listen to it live you can listen to it whenever you want.

• Some programmes you can actually watch the presenter talking live which brings a visual element to radio which was never there before.

• Radio gives audiences the sense of someone talking to you which is direct address and like you're hanging out with the presenters.

• Social Media allows audiences to interact with the radio shows thanks to digital technology.

• Apps offer a better user experience for the user (UX).

• Downloading podcasts onto your phone you can listen to it offline.

• You can use your phone anywhere to listen to radio.

• DIGITAL CONVERGENCE
• Where stuff comes together

• Audio Streaming
• Where listeners can click on a link to play a radio programme instantly over the internet.
• Everyone around the world can get access to this.
• The ability for audio streaming to be accessed via the internet has added a global reach to radio output as listeners abroad can also tune in to programming.
• Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB)
• A greater number of wavelengths and therefore stations are available with digital audio.
• The use of DAB has increased the amount of stations allowing for niche programming and also improved quality to encourage more listeners.
• Podcasts
• Programmes are packaged and available as downloadable content on a range of different platforms
• Listening to radio programming in podcast form is more flexible for audiences and allows audiences who have missed the broadcast programme to listen
• Cross Platform
• The combination of visuals with audio output and availability of radio through television platforms
• The combination of media platforms has allowed radio to utilise visual elements such as web cams to remain appealing to a modern audience

Regulation

• Radio is regulated by OFCOM.

• Localness

• The BBC need to make sure that the radio shows have an element of being local.

• Content

• Radio and TV in the UK is broadly self-regulated.

• LNWH is broadcast after the 9pm watershed.

• The regulation is largely ineffective as although the show is past the watershed people are allowed to watch it whenever through digital technology. All it takes to watch something that is regulated as not ideal to watch is a few clicks to confirm your age which can be easily lied about, making the regulation of radio ineffective as it is extremely hard to regulate.

• A LNWH's radio episode contained 4 fucks, 2 shits, 2 arses, 2 bastards this was heavily criticised by The Sun as they are massive competitors against the BBC. They believed that it shouldn't be acceptable to show this due to the ideologies etc of the show.

Plurality

• Where a media product exhibits and gives voice to a wide range of ideological perspectives.

• The BBC is a public service broadcaster, it has a self-imposed remit to 'Inform, Educate and Entertain'.

• The BBC tries to offer different radio shows for different audiences.

Radio Unit - Lesson 1

Late Night Women's Hour - Radio

Spin off of Women's HourBroadcast on BBC Radio 4Presented by Lauren Laverne

• How does LNWH meet the needs of its audience?

• Discusses the idea of women like things to do, such as cooking and reading.

• Also makes reference to Women's roles in society back in the day and also nowadays.

• The language they use is quite sophisticated so it appeals to the middle class audience, they also use big words 'democratisation'.

• 'I knew our marriage was over when we bought an Ikea wardrobe' - quite snobby, by dismissing an Ikea wardrobe it suggests that they buy things way more expensive and high end than normal.

• Also takes the form of a round table discussion - nobody shouts over each other which is quite professional. Quite 'egalitarian' which means they are all equal they are not one over each other.

• 'Winter mug' - the mode of address is extremely middle class, its a panel of middle class people talking to a middle class audience. However, working class people can still listen to it and understand.

• It paints a utopia 'perfect world' image.

• Entire show is about hygge - and quizzing the danish person on it.

• Creates a binary between men and women it talks about hardworking men and emotional women.

• 'Gasp at 20 books'

• Sexist show to an extent with talking about women doing the cooking and housekeeping etc.

• Who is the target audience for this programme?

• Women that are middle aged and middle class as the language used in this radio show is quite high end and sophisticated.

• Could appeal to feminists as it is an all female panel.

• Appeals to an international audience as one of the panel is danish.

• What regulatory issues arise from this particular episode?

• OFCOM - no material that is likely to harm or offend, there is dashes of sexism but you really need to pick it out and due to the time it is shown (11pm this isn't the dominant ideology)

• Why does the BBC broadcast this show?

• Possibly makes the BBC seem friendly as the show is very friendly whilst discussing certain topics.

• BBC is a PBS - biggest in the world and isn't paid for by advertising however it has certain necessities and needs to do certain things.

• To inform, educate and entertain.

• BBC have a remit and have to produce a range of shows that target a range of audiences.

Woman's Hour - Context

• First broadcast was in 1946 at 2pm in the afternoon.

• The first broadcast was immediately after WW2, getting the morale back up and getting them to rebuild after WW2.

• Designed to educate female audiences and was purposely put on at a time which would be ideal for an average females day for example being around picking the kids up from school and cleaning etc.

• Moved in the 70's to a radio channel due to diversification of audience.

• Big criticism of the show was that the show was too middle class.

• Topics discussed such as 'How to hang your husbands suit'.

Film Industry

Key Theory - End of Audience

• Roland Barthes - what the author intended is neither here nor there.

• All that matters is the audiences interpretation.

• Clay Shirky believes that audiences have ended.

• This is because we are not in any way an audience anymore as we are not passive as we interact with media products and the producers.

• Audiences are becoming producers as we are making our own media products.

• We are part of the product and part of the marketing.

Clay Shirky - End of Audience Theory

• Audiences are no longer passive: they interact with media products in an increasingly complex variety of ways.

Death Stranding (unreleased)

• Producer

• Hideo Kojima

• Used to work for Konami.

• Eccentric producer and breaks rules. 

• Trailer

• Intentionally bizarre iconography

• Many open invitations for active audiences to create 'fan theories' and to decide what they believe the game is actually about however naturally this can be disappointing doe audiences who do not get what they expect.

• Actors, famous A-List hollywood actors, and their likenesses being placed within the game. VERY high production values, and VERY high budget.

• Sony funding an extremely expensive and likely to fail videogame in exchange for exclusivity.

• Little merchandise options, a direct contrast to Assassins Creed, and little opportunities for DLC or multiple sequels.

• Immersive array of shot types. Positions the audience directly with Sam/Reedus.

• Single take - exceptionally hard to achieve in a film, though possible with CG.

Assassins Creed 3 Liberation

Find pieces of promotional material related to Assassin's Creed III: Liberation. These may include the following:

• Posters

• Banner ads

• Assassins Creed is oversaturated.

Pen Portrait

Name: Jack

Age: 15

Gender: Male

Class: Working

Lifestyle: At secondary school, average student, goes out with friends occasionally, no part time job, plays U16's football.

Cultural Capital: low social status, not very cultured.

• There are certain amounts of merchandise that appeal to a niche audience.

• Henry Jenkins - Fandom.

• Ubisoft created a Youtube channel to advertise the trailer.

• Ubisoft use social media to advertise the game.

• Your attitude towards other people changes if you play too many videogames.

• You become stupid if you play too many videogames.

• You may become antisocial if you play too many videogames.

• Hypodermic Needle - Is not a true theory because people who play videogames do not go out and kill people and are ordinary people.

• There is a representation and a cultivation of the theory that video games are violent and that violence is the only way to get anywhere in a the majority of videogames.

• Doom caused a Moral Panic - where an event is over exaggerated in the media.

• Media pushes something out of nothing.

• Reception Theory - encoding and decoding model.

• Encoding - the producer places a message or an ideology into a product.

• Decoding - the consumer identifies and takes on board the ideology of the product.

• Preferred Reading - agreement with the ideology.

• Negotiated Reading - you choose what to believe.

• Oppositional Reading - you completely reject the ideology.

• Aberrant Reading - where you don't understand the ideology at all.

• Assassins Creed 3 Liberation with Reception Theory

• Preferred / Dominant Reading
• Violence is acceptable.
• There is a binary opposition between good and bad people.
• Women can be violent.
• Gender equality.
• Celebration of French history and culture.
• Suppressed their french ideologies so the product can target a larger audience.
• Anti-Slavery ideologies within Assassins Creed 3 Liberation.
• Intertextual reference to Django Unchained.
• The preferred reading is that violence is acceptable as we want to save our main character and give her freedom.

• Negotiated Reading
• They may agree with the anti-slavery message but they do not agree with the violence therefore the game is then boring and no fun.
• They may only play the game to kill people so they find the narrative boring and do not agree so they skip all the story and just go round killing people which gives no meaning to the media product.

• Oppositional Reading
• The oppositional reading is that violence doesn't solve problems and if the audience believe this then they will find the game boring and not enjoyable.

• Multiple interpretations, Multiple experiences

• Lore - deeper story that isn't apparent in a videogame.

• Environmental Storytelling - you get the story not from cutscenes but from other elements (talking to characters, descriptions of items) - Dark Souls 3

• Does a videogame have to be fun?

• The Silver Case: The 25th Ward (Grasshopper Manufacture, 2018)

• The silver case series are visual novels or text based adventure games. However, they are highly atypical of the genre, with little characterisation, a deliberately difficult 

• This game is atypical
• It doesn't let you choose anything.
• No characterisation.
• A long build up until any action.
• Lack of any structure.
• Lack of gameplay.
• Not even a videogame.
• Conversations were odd.
• No type of continuity at all.
• Horrible sound with the typewriting noise, it is an identifying factor and they do not care about what the audience think.
• The audience are positioned in a way where they don't know what's going on.
• The intended response is to make you not want to play the game anymore, almost as if it is challenging you to stick through it.
• The extensive use of strong language.

• Jenkins - Fandom

• Fandom refers to a particularly organised and motivated audience of a certain media producer franchise.

• Unlike the generic audience or the classic spectator, fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings.

• Fans appropriate texts and read them in ways that are not fully intended by the media producers ('textual poaching'). Examples of this may manifest in conventions, fan fiction and so on.

• Manifestations of Fandom
• Main benefits of fandom is that it improves social interaction, and people are allowed to come together to socialise about their interests.

Video Games - Pt.2

How does this trailer target a specialised and a generalised audience?

• According to David Hesmondhalgh, it is essential for industries to 'minimise risks and maximise profits'.

• Trailer for Assassins Creed 3 Liberation:

• Targeting minorities by having a coloured woman and a coloured group of people involved in the game, the black female protagonist subverts the expectations of having a white protagonist, therefore making the game trailer interesting and unique.

• We have a black female avatar or player/character/MC.

• Adding 'new missions', is targeting pre-existing fans, double dipping.

• Common industry practice, to rerelease games.

• Tackles issues surrounding slavery, post-colonialism. 

• It is a potentially subject to the audience, which pushes boundaries and increases word of mouth sales. So by friends talking about the game more people are going to be wanting to buy and play it due to it being interesting and talked about.

• This trailer shares similarities to the cult film 'Django Unchained' which was made in 2012 the same year that this trailer was released.

• The graphics were of high quality, which means it has high production values.

• A spin off from the main series, released on a smaller console, this is a big budget, high quality and high production value game produced by Ubisoft Montreal, which have also created games in the successful assassins creed series.

• Multi-Platform Release - Gives a general or mass audience compared to an exclusive game which would only come out on one platform. Exclusive games will ride up sales on certain consoles as if there is a game only available on that console then people will buy that console over another for that specific game. By Assassins Creed 3 Liberation being a multi-platform release it will give the game a general or mass audience which minimises risks as there are more people available to purchase the game which will increase profit.

• The trailer shares the conventions of a high end blockbuster Hollywood film.

• Diegetic voiceover/Narration, lots of action packed gameplay. Orchestral soundtrack suggests that is quite high end giving it high production value.

• Each of these games feature a character wearing a hood covering their face, they're each set in a historical setting, this minimises risk as they are creating a brand image which is instantly recognisable to an audience.

• If a game sells, the company will make a new one but with similarities so they can bring in money still.

• Intertextual reference to the castlevania series, with the new feature in the liberation game by being able to use a whip.

Magazine

• Woman magazine sold 3 million copies a week for 70pence per copy.

• Adbusters is a culture jamming magazine which is anti-capitalist which rejects the idea of capitalism and the rejects the idea of money and profit.

• Adbusters cover price was £10.99 - the price was so high due to not being a mainstream magazine.

• We know Adbusters is non mainstream and anti capitalist - due to it being subversive and it is intentionally dark.

• Adbusters is published by Adbusters Foundation as it is self published.

• Adbusters doesn't contain adverts which explains its high cover price and is a non profit magazine.

• Louis Vuitton - a black malnourished african child to advertise their company, saying about red soles, due to the child having bleeding feet as they have no shoes to make people who buy Louis Vuitton shoes for an expensive prices feel bad for spending money on shoes when people cannot afford basic shoes so their soles are bleeding.

Video Games

• The sales for Assassins Creed 3 - Liberation did not meet the company's expectations so the Ubisoft producers decided to rerelease the product.

• The game was not very well critically received and it didn't receive any good reviews. Sales will be affected by the low critic reviews causing it to underperform so they are rereleasing it a second time due to it being easier to make money as they can polish up the game as they already have a game.

• 600,000 copies being sold for the PSVita which is good on a small platform such as a PSVita but due to it being such a big budget game it didn't do financially well.

• Video games used to be regulated by a company called ELSPA, now it is regulated by PEGI.

• Pegi rating don't relate to the level of difficulty - it is more about informing the audience about what is in it.

• It is legal to buy a pegi 18 game if you are under the age of 18 but a shop probably will not sell it to you.

• The first ever game to receive an age certificate was in 1993 and it was resident evil which got an age certificate of 15.

• It is an advisory classification system.

• Steam is a digital gaming and downloading platform.

• BBFC - Some games are randomly picked out to be rated by the BBFC. Now all you need to do is buy things online and get it delivered to your house online.

• The regulation of video games in the UK is largely ineffective due to digital technology.

Introduction to Video Game Industry

Introduction to Video Game Industry

In the SEGA game gear advert for video games which was published in Viz Comic in the early 90's the advert is completely aimed at younger heterosexual males. There is no reference to video games being advertised towards women as it may symbolise that women aren't interested in video games. The way the video game has been marketed has been made to act like something that is used to keep busy and to pass time for young males.

What is a video game?

• You need a video gaming console in order to play video games
• E.g. Xbox, PS4, Computer
• Easier to watch films due to streaming services its a lot cheaper to watch films than it is to play video games

• Video games target a core/niche audience

• Video games 99% of the time have an interactive element therefore needing an active consumer.

• Video games are generally played more by younger audiences compared to films which are appealable to all ages (child, horror, comedy etc. )

• Hypodermic Needle model - makes a massive assumption that the audience is stupid, an assumption made about video games is that it can make you violent if you play it too much.

• Vastly more complicated narratives, you always seem to get hit with a problems so they constantly have a disequilibrium. The video games also just end all the time due to you running out of lives and you may never be able to get past that stage again.

• Theres often an online component to the video game - Many times they're not permanent and only exist for a certain amount of time.

• Interactivity

• Huge expenditure of resources

• Much higher recommended retail price (RRP)

• Significantly longer length

• A dedicated, 'core' target audience

• Games developed for specific hardware, or released multiplatform.

Video Game - production, distribution and circulation

• Like all industries, the video game industry is a specialised industry.

• First video game was in 1962 and it was space war. Only labs would have access to the video game, you would need a lot of space to have a computer and they were limited. 

• Space Invaders, Japanese Game and made by Tito, it was an arcade game and you pay to play it in a public space. It was so popular in Japan that they had a yen shortage because all the coins were being put into space invader machines that Japan had to produce more yen coins. Space Invaders is a shooting game which is extremely popular.

• Centipede - American arcade boom - trackball to control your icon and was colourful compared to black and white space invaders. 

• Bedroom coders and Uk micros - phenomenon in UK with bedroom coders, and people made their own video games and companies even used to publish them.

• Early experimentations and generic fluidity - there was a lot of different genres and the games were made by drunk men generically. The games all had specific genres and they were made by a single teenager in the UK.

• The 1980's videogame crash

• Atari knew ET was going to be a hit so they made a videogame in a month and they made loads of copies and only ended up selling a few due to the game being not of the best quality. Atari buried copies in a desert as that was cheaper than trying to sell the games.

• Japanese Imports - Japanese are good at pinching ideas and making them better like music. Japan done the same with video games and used to produce their own better version of video games.

• Regional differences - JPN vs the rest of the world
• Final Fantasy - Fallout
• Final Fantasy you follow a story whereas in Fallout you can make decisions rather than following the same story every time.

• The Japanese console boom - Mario - Nintendo ENS - the most successful video game ever made, and still is. Its 32 years old, the reason it did so well is due to it being marketed towards kids. Soundtrack was easily recognisable and it is very well composed. The graphics were also good quality. It raised the standard of video games.

• Street Fighter ||, Female characters became more popular due to a female character on Street Fighter. 

• Arcades and Consoles - Console was released that changed the way gaming was, it was the Sony Playstation 1 (PS1)

• PS1 advert - It works as although its a parody acting against playstation it is still advertising the product and theres references to the consumers becoming chimps. By using a clever reverse psychology it also includes comedy aspect and it is making fun of the idea that video games make you stupid and that they destroy your life. Its deliberately condesending.

• Video game consoles are cheap, but its the games that make the money or the extra accessories like a headset or the controller.

• Indie games tend to be made by small development teams
• Undertale

• Triple A game (AAA game, Major Game) takes thousands of people to make these games
• Fifa, COD, Sims, Halo

• Controversies surrounding production 
• The developer of Tomb Raider did say that Lara Croft was the character due to the game constantly following her so you're seeing her from the back and he reckoned it would be more appealing for it to be a woman's bum than a males bum.

• Digital Distribution - You can now get video games online and instead of having disc's you just need to download certain games which makes it difficult when its discontinued as you will not be able to play it again even if you've payed for it compared to if you had a disc.

Component 1 - Section B

Were studying video games for this section in the exam.

• Assassins Creed 3 - Liberation
• Published by Ubisoft in 2012 for the Playstation Vita, with a subsequent HD re-release for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

• Video games are regulated in a different way to films, Pegi give advisory age levels to games.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pUhraVG7Ow
• Assassins Creed 3 Liberation Trailer - The videogame try's to make itself different due to having an intense narrative. The game is also being sold like a film due to the cinematic aspect of it. The main character is also a black women which is very uncommon in video games.