Challenges Facing the BBC

Explain the challenges that face popular music radio programmes on PSB stations. Refer to the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show to support your answer.

In your answer you must also:

-Explain how political, cultural and economic contexts influence the status of popular music radio programming.

Change in marketplace

Competition – Streaming (e.g. Spotify monthly users) – Commercial stations (no remit concerns, not required to be unbiased politically)

Dealing with competition – BBC Sounds –Dealing with on demand culture.

Technological Convergence – Online – Video – Social Media – Very active on social media to bring in new listeners and hold on to current ones.

Popular music radio programmes on PSB stations face the challenges of keeping up with the social climate as it constantly changes, today’s society demands constant content and reliable updates in information, so a music programme may struggle to keep to these standards constantly. For example the Radio 1 Breakfast show is required to bring new music from British artists into the public eye alongside playing currently popular music and keeping its audience informed, educated and up to date with important news and social issues. R1BS relies heavily on its online presence to gain new listeners and maintain its current audience. The R1BS also needs to use new services and online opportunities such as BBC Sounds to keep up with technology and its progression in the modern world and ensure that the show stays relevant to today’s society.

Currently Radio 1 faces competition in the form of streaming services and other commercial radio stations. For example Spotify had a reported 5.7 UK listeners in 2016 and is already growing more popular than other music services offering both music and podcasts such as Apple Music, with Spotify allowing its listeners to listen to music of their choice at any time, as well as offering a wide and international selection of artists and music – as opposed to the R1BS which is required to broadcast music that is created by approximately 40% British artists. It could be said that in future BBC and Radio 1 could become irrelevant as all content found on the BBC can be found elsewhere in some way. However Radio 1 is still maintaining its audiences but has to struggle to find new methods of maintaining the constantly developing audience. Commercial Radio could be considered a threat to the R1BS as it does not have to limit its content to build it around a remit and does not have to remain politically unbiased. This could be a threat as some audiences are brought in by a station with a particular political viewpoint that mirrors their own.

To overcome some of the challenges facing Radio 1, they have been forced to use technological convergence to their advantage and as a way of advertising themselves and extending their reach using resources such as the Radio 1 website, BBC sounds and the various BBC apps. Radio 1 flaunts its variety of content such as the live lounge, interviews, podcasts and different presenters frequently to gain an audience in other areas of the BBC as well as keep an active audience for the programme itself. Radio 1 is helped somewhat by its access to the license fee and budget of the BBC, with Radio 1 having a service budget of £34.7 million in 2016/17. Radio 1 and the BBC uses its license fee to create new ways to access BBC content and keep its audience from feeling like the BBC is becoming stale and uninteresting.

BBC stays relevant and popular by producing a variety of content that appeals to a wide audience, for example their various Radio programmes each appeal to a different target audience with different music genres, conversation/interview topics and featured presenters, for example Radio 5 mainly broadcasts live news and sports coverage for a general target audience where the R1BS features a variety of music genres and artists with news in small bulletins throughout the show with a more specific target audience of 15-29 year olds. With the range covered by each of the programs the BBC can maintain a wide audience of people across all of its content.