Radio: Have You Heard George's Podcast? (exams from 2024) GapFill

Starting in  2022201920092013, BBC Radio 5 Live began releasing Have You Heard George’s Podcast?, a series of shows hosted by British rapper and spoken-word artist George the  PoetOracleScribeWordsmith. The series has been met with acclaim from critics for George’s unique creative take on the topics he discusses, as well as the injection of poetry and music into the podcast to make it something different from an on-demand episode of   a conventionalan FMa boringa morning broadcast radio show. The podcast would even go on to win a Peabody Award, a highly prestigious accolade for a non-fiction text.

Have You Heard George’s Podcast? is an interesting piece of media as it represents numerous areas of change, namely  audio recordingradiopoetrypodcasting as an industry, the BBC as a public service broadcaster, and British mainstream societal attitudes towards race and  majoritysocialregionalminority groups.

As a public service broadcaster, the BBC has  a goala vowan objectivea remit to the public to inform and entertain. Increasingly, the BBC has been aiming to present more diverse perspectives on issues after facing criticism that the organisation primarily caters towards white, middle-class audiences. George, as a black British man and artist, offers a new voice on  Radio 1 Radio 5 LiveRadio 1XtraRadio 4, particularly as this station’s current listenership is predominantly wealthy middle-aged men. Approaching this from Stuart Hall’s theory of audience  receptionreinterpretationreactionreferencing, it is likely that the existing core demographic might come away with a negotiated or  an inaccuratean oppositionala preferreda mixed reading because of how different HYHGP is from what they might expect. With this in mind, it’s fair to say that the BBC commissioning the podcast might be a way of attracting a younger and more  disperseddiverseaffluentinfluential audience.

From an industrial perspective, podcasts are one of the most popular new media formats that have arisen with the proliferation of  online mediawireless headphonesdigital audio broadcastingtargeted advertisements. With the lower cost of equipment, ease of use of hosting platforms, and the ability to find a  massfragmentednicheglobal audience, anyone with an idea for a podcast could potentially find fame when in the past it would have been impossible. This is what theorist   Stuart HallPaul GilroyDavid GauntlettClay Shirky terms as mass amateurisation, a major shift in the media landscape that breaks down the barriers between audience and creator. By commissioning professionally made podcasts, an established broadcaster like the BBC can appeal to the new target markets of podcast listeners but with  moderately expensivefairly lowvery lowzero production costs.