LO1 Task 3: Analysis of a radio station

1. Purpose 

 Their purpose is to entertain, inform and promote to their audience. Kerrang! Radio entertains their audience via the live Kerrang! show and advertising other events and shows to increase listener excitement and hype. Kerrang! Radio inform through their hosts commentary and phone-ins with other listeners and the interviews with artists or band members. As audience members will be able to find things they didn't about the people that the hosts interview. Kerrang! Radio promotes the various Kerrang products such as the Kerrang! music awards, the Kerrang! yearly album, the Kerrang! magazine, and their energy drink. 

1. Ownership 

Kerrang! Radio is a subsidiary of Bauer Media. They started as a magazine as Bauer Media only used to do print media. Kerrang! owns the Kerrang! Magazine, energy drink, music awards etc. This ownership helps them synergise promotion for their products an example would be advertising the live awards then having a radio show recording the events live on air. The presenters are popular and well known amongst other radio shows, one of the most popular would be Johnny Doom as he has been with Kerrang! radio since its release. Kerrang! Radio plays a variety of music ranging from rock to heavy metal. Having a diverse array of music allows them to target a large demographic as possible. 

1. Listenership

Due to the most recent survey by RAJAR (Radio Joint Office Research) in December 2023 the Kerrang! has a weekly audience of 399,000 listeners. This is reflected in the amount of shows and the variety of music they play. The diversity that Kerrang! has allows them to target this mass audience of nearly four hundred thousand with ease. 

1. Funding/advertising

Kerrang! is a national commercial radio station and therefore uses generic advertising in their shows taking adverts from services and businesses etc. This is because they have a 18-35+ target audience and the older end of the spectrum would need car repairs or paint for their house. They also have synergised adverts for their other products such as the Kerrang! magazine and the Kerrang! Music Awards which often includes interactive elements with the audience to make it more entertaining. An example would include a phone-in competition to win a free pallet of their energy drink. As this both incentivises listeners to phone-in and stay listening and want to buy the energy drink. This fits the style of the station because Kerrang! is ultimately a brand and they want to promote that brand as much as possible. This also fits the style of the radio station because rock and metal fans are often associated with not sleeping well and requiring energy drinks such as Red Bull and Monster in order to make it from day to day. Kerrang! has their energy drink because it caters towards this markers as they know who their target audience is. 

1. Audience

Kerrang! radio's audience is mainly male with 61% of listeners being male and 39% being female. The ABC1 bracket of disposable income makes up half/50% of their audience. This is because you need a high amount of disposable income to buy band merch, go to gigs, and go to festivals which Kerrang! likes to advertise and their audience likes to go to. The target age demographic of Kerrang! radio is between 18-35. Kerrang! distributes music in the rock, metal, and hardcore genres including artists such as Linkin Park, Nirvana, Metallica, and Paramore. Kerrang! radio and/or Kerrang! radio services are available through: Smart speaker, car radio, DAB or home radio, Kerrang! app, Kerrang! website. By having a vast array of ways to access their radio show it increases the size of their potential audience size. They use John Mahon, Hope Lyne, Johnny Doom and other hosts as figureheads for listeners to idealise and see as ideal selves/partners. When this is done people will tune into a show specifically because that host is on the show just to hear them.

Kerrang! Radio features a full schedule of different hosts and music tastes in order to target to their wide mass audience's diverse niches and tastes. The heavier and more alternative tracks get put on later in the schedule with Johnny Doom's show Kerrang! Radio Unleashed, this is because this is far past watershed when children will no longer be awake and won't have access to the often aggressive or promiscuous language used in heavy rock and metal genres. This also reflects the fact that again heavy rockers and metalheads have irregular sleep patterns and this caters towards them staying up throughout the whole show so they can have the show in the background. Unlike other radio stations Kerrang! Radio has a much longer radio schedule starting from 00:00 to 21:00 this reflects the insomniacs and irregular sleepers in the metal and rock communities. The early scheduling could also be like this to help people working graveyard shifts from falling asleep by playing energetic music.  Kerrang! also caters towards musicians evident by their music-centric related programming, Kerrang! album of the year (Their most listened to/streamed songs) and the Kerrang! festival are all music orientated things. Kerrang! partners itself with musicians and other musical events like download to match the codes and conventions of a rock and metal radio station and help to target their full mass audience. 

1. Access 

Kerrang! Radio can be accessed via a smart speaker, a car or home radio,. Then on  Planet Radio or the Kerrang! website via any blackbox device. Kerrang! Radio has evolved and adapted alongside the changes of technological convergence and in 2019 they created two sister station Kerrang! Klassic and Kerrang! Radio Unleashed. The incorporation of these two sister station allows Kerrang! to target the niches in their audience to a better degree and deliver the music that they want to them. Both of the sister stations are online only this works with their target age demographic of 18-35 as this captures generations of digital native who would be used to using their blackbox devices to access other services, now they can listen to their favourite songs or hosts from Kerrang! whenever or wherever they like opposed to having a physical radio like they used to. This also allows them to keep up to date with host changes, show changes etc. To the point where the audience can see the full music list on the website something that wasn't possible in the past. This is better for both the audience and Kerrang! as the listeners can tune in and out for the songs they like and in turn Kerrang! can get more listeners this was as some people in the past would have tuned off for a song not knowing that their favourite song may have come next.