Sound.

   Almost up to date on my lecture blogs! I really wasn't as productive as I'd hoped I would be for our mid-sem break. Fml. Oh well, moving on!

So week five's lecture is on sound and the power of radio! I never really listen to much radio apart from Triple J's Hottest 100 (I am totez a hipstaaahhh) and the odd listen now and then. And if I am, for some ridiculous reason, sick of listening to my iPod, I shall listen to it. But I'm warning you, this occasion comes about once in a blue moon because let's be serious here - I have great taste in music. Anyway, getting back on track. I've always thought about how hard it would be to host a radio show. As Bruce mentioned, it is a very intimate form of media and it needs to be so much more engaging than television. If you tried to put television material onto radio and radio material on television it would just be terrible. With radio you really have to entertain and pull your listeners in - something that I imagine would be insanely hard to do, especially if you were hosting the show on your own.

Radio is not just a simple conversation. So much thought goes into the content and the audience. For a radio show to be interesting and engaging, the interviewer really needs to know their audience - particularly what interests them and what they want to know. With good radio hosts (the ones that I like, anyway), I've noticed that they will always try to inform the audience to the best of their ability and in the most entertaining way possible. But in order to do this, a great amount of research is undertaken on the topic they are speaking about or the person they are interviewing. Another skill radio hosts have is making the conversation comfortable. An interviewer should always make the person being interviewed feel comfortable enough to be able to answer questions promptly and with the right amount of detail. And I think most radio hosts do this by just having a good sense of humour and having the ability to laugh at themselves. Being a radio presenter would take some serious skillz man!

I do think that radio is a great form of media - it hasn't begun to die out like other forms of media (I'm talking to you, newspapers). Podcasts have definitely helped with this though, so now certain radio stations can broadcast their shows at any place and at any time. I think that it's just something people like to have playing because it makes them feel involved and up to date with society and trends. It's also very convenient because it's not something that you have to take time out to do - you can always multitask while listening to the radio and even though you may be doing something else, it is still very engaging because you will find that you are always listening out for what the radio presenter will say next.