LO1 - Investigating a radio station

Community radio stations operate on a small scale which is for the good of the public, put something into the community and get something back, this is stated by OfCom and operated not for profit. Sheffield Live provide a service foe underserved groups. The owner of Sheffield Live is Commedia Sheffield, and they are the Community Media Association (CMA) who is committed to promoting access to the media for people and communities. they enable people to establish and develop community-based communications media for empowerment, cultural expression, information and entertainment. some of the programs Sheffield Live! broadcast are: 
Community Live
Spirit of the Wapentake
The Local Talent Show
Soul Purpose
Vancouver Manœuvre  

They produce these programs as they are appealing to the community audience which is very wide. 
Theses shows are in many different types of genres ranging from basic talk and discussion show, to music shows. for example Community Live is a show which is hosted by a range of volunteers that discuss many different topics. they Broadcast this as it appeals very well to their audience as it does cover a large range of topics. Spirit of the Wapentake is South Yorkshires no.1 rock show which has been going for 8 years, they play the best rock music from the past 40 years or so. Also another show is The Local Talent Show, is a show that showcases the local artists, bands and songwriters who are interviewed and perform live every week.

Sheffield Live's target audience is very wide, as there programs cater for a large range of people for example their music shows range from ragga to rock, which aims at people of all races and walks of live. their main target audience is for people living in specific areas of sheffield, like Manor and Darnall, this is because people that live in these areas are very diverse and so are there interests this is why the target them with their large range of shows. The broadcasts reach 32.000 people a week and that is 11% reached people in transmission coverage. The target audience for The Local Talent Show are one that is for a younger generation who are interested in discovering new music to be seen as hipster and original. this audience is mainly C2DE because of their job rolls and spending power.

the community media association are an independent company which help to set up Sheffield Live! the CMA are in charge of most of the production process within Sheffield Live!. a large amount of the shows broad cast are recorded live which mean everything has to run smoothy. they're involved in every step of the way of the recording processes, from recording, to editing and distributing. The key teams that help within pre-production are the scheduling team, the music management, content management, budgeting team, and contingency planning. Also a large range of documentation needed, production schedules, call sheets, studio plans, logging sheets, scripts. also in pre production the scheduling team need to look at the legal and ethical side of things and apply with Ofcoms rules of the watershed, so programmes that are crude or not appropriate for a younger audience are shown after a certain time. furthermore during pre-production advertising has to be done in a large range of way using social media and banners to make sure that the show has a vast audience. During production, the show is broadcast live on the website and on analogue technology, they have to be careful with live shows as to broadcast appropriate content. Throughout the show the presents use a mixing desk and faders that are used to introduce each unit of the show. In post production a large amount of editing is still used to make sure there are no sounds that shouldn't be there and also editing in music behind the spoken audio. just like Podcast are heavily edited in post production in Adobe Audition and Cuebase.

the main competitors for Sheffield Live! are BBC Radio Sheffield and Hallam Radio. they are seen as there competitors because they all play similar radio shows but Sheffield Live! are more independent and original as of the diverse amount of shows they produce. for example Sheffield Live have the show Talking Balls which is very similar to BBC Radio Sheffield's show of Football Heaven. Sheffield Live further stands out from its competitors as it is a non-profit organisation. 32,000 people tune into Sheffield live every week.