RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

suburbs. The main fight these days , however , is fought between stations concentrating on talk and those concentrating on music. Survival depends entirely on the ratings . Ratings are achieved by targeting the right audience at the right time with the right program . To take an example ; 2GB in Sydney is geared to the high income earning suburbs in the East and the North of the city. It has now decided to address itself, to some extent, to listeners living in the working class suburbs in the West. The General Manager explains this move thus ; "Research has shown that we have two groups of listeners ; those who listen to the station to reinforce their ordinary lif e , and a second group of aspirational listeners . The station has an educative function , and it's very important that some listeners have this."2B) Fjnancially the most interesting market, so it seems , is the age group between 25 and 39. It is better researched than апу other listener group . The market of the 16 to 24 years old has, according to some station managers, too many unemployed and not enough disposable income . Good ratings attract massive amounts of топеу . The heroes of commercial rađio are program hosts and talk-back compere ,■ breakfast announcers and đrive-time hosts (Australians spend a lot of time in cars , đriving to and from work for up to one and a half hours . 98Z of cars have rađios . ) Мапу of the greatest stars of radio have been trained by the ABC and have begun a career there. However , as soon as these people develop a profile, they end up in much higher paid jobs in the commercial stations , зоте of which even advertise these personalitites as having been "too dangerous for the ABC" , mainly because they began to develop a 'strong personality profile at the ABC . Most expensive formats are news programs. One station, specializing оп news, spends $3 mio per уеаг just for this program. Housewives , the lonely, and those who feel that they have not enough say in our society , are addressed with talk-back shows . These shows pretend to give their audience an opportunity to express themselves , but аге in fact vehicles to provide the talk-show masters with an immensely high profile which can border on the dangerous.) Among the like-nmnded, those talk -masters епјоу a credibility which is egualled only by a few television newsreaders but is based entireiy on the mythical assumption that the person behind the rmcrophone has all the answers . Unfortunately, politicians in recent years have begun to plug in such talkback programs in an attempt to ride high on the profile of the host . It does happen tođay that important political announcements are made on such shows rather than at a conference accesslble to all međia , Talkshow hosts acguire manipulative powers which - under the pretence to speak the vox populi - are difficult to keep under control even for the ABT .

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