Notes
-Can each requirement demonstrate a radiogenic quality?
-Yes.
-How? What techniques would this involve?
Environmental sound
In radio production, and in particular on location, the sound quality of the environment is an important factor. This is partly determined by the reflective properties of surfaces and their distance from the microphone (Starkey, 2004a: 11).
Acoustics allow the listener to ‘hear space’ or, to put it differently, ‘space is created acoustically’ (Shingler and Wieringa, 1998: 56).
If the sounds are produced in a studio and all resonance is deadened then these sounds seem to occupy the same space as that of the listener, replicating the acoustic qualities of most people’s homes, where typically sounds are deadened by carpets, wallpaper, curtains and furniture. (Shingler and Wieringa, 1998: 56)
Co-presence
One of the main ideas emerging from this work is the idea of the shared experience of listening or viewing at the same moment in time and the sense of others being present (or ‘co-present’) with us in that activity.
Intimacy
In her ‘chats’ with callers about their personal problems, Raeburn established a bond of intimacy using the full repertoire of ‘para-social interaction’; in other words the characteristics of intimacy in face-to-face interaction (sincerity, attentiveness, empathy, caring) but performed over the air.
Liveness
Ellis makes the point that its live quality was extremely important, ‘live performance gave television a direct and intimate link with its audience, and this link became one of the defining characteristics of broadcast television’
Recent developments in technology and in the economics of radio production have led to an increase in pre-recorded DJ speech on commercial radio stations.
Practically, if used without regulatory control, at the extremes automation could enable a whole radio station to broadcast without any presenters or technical operators at all, or to appear to have the same presenter broadcasting 24 hours a day.
Liveliness possesses the same qualities as liveness in that it gives the impression of unscripted speech, which has an unpredictable and spontaneous quality and is delivered to an audience co-present in time.