26th MARCH 2012 - LECTURE 5

So Monday's lecture was online as a sound recording. My original thoughts for this was that I was going to be listening to a somewhat shoddy Lectopia piece and I'd have to rewind and go over the information a thousand times just to understand it. Instead what I found myself listening to was a clip of sound, nothing more, nothing less than noise, that actually convinced me to maybe start listening to radio more often.

The idea was proposed in the recording that great radio pieces were based on human experience; the concept that if you make the story human or emotional it will appeal to a lot more people and gather more listeners in this way. I 100%-sign-my-name-bells-are-ringing agree with this!! When, on the off chance that I actually am listening to radio, I want the speaker and their topic to appeal to me, so that I feel justified in giving them my attention when I could get my news or information in a faster/easier way. I love the idea of radio. That you can get all this emotion and all this information across to people via nothing more than the sound of your voice. As a medium that is based on one of the greatest methods of communication for humanity, radio should be the most popular source of media. And yet we rarely listen to it.

The sound clip mentioned that "people are time poor". And yes, humanity seems to have become more and more time-lacking, even with the introduction of technology that helps to shorten the amount of time needed to do things. People are under a lot of pressure time wise. Transportation is based on time. When we eat is based on time. When we work is based on time. Time structures our lives. When I listen to radio it's either in a car or in shopping centres where they have music over the speaker systems. Now that I live in the city and use public transport instead of driving like I use too,  the time I would usually listen to radio, the time spent in cars, has been removed almost all-together. BUT, there is hope yet!!

I am currently part of a first-year student based program called Newspace, where myself and two others read the news every Friday at 12 o'clock for JACRadio. I love doing this. I like researching of the stories of the day and I like sitting in the booth, talking into the giant microphone and telling the listeners what's what for that day. Doing a program like this means I am able to stay connected with radio, not in the same way as I was before but still in a way that I feel like I am not giving up on radio.

When I went to write this response I'd already read my friend Serena's blog beforehand, and her response about this lecture was a sound clip that she'd 'spontaneously' recorded. Now I thought, "Hey! That's a brilliant idea!!" But I didn't want to copy her exactly, so instead here's some radio:

This is of course the fabulous 'War of the World's' broadcast by Orson Welles. A great example of the power of radio.


Video available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf6omuz1MrM