LO1 Investigation of a radio station

Ownership and viewer access

Owned by Hamburg, Germany based Bauer Media aaaaaating as a local digital station broadcast from the Birmingham FC football ground, Kerrang radio is the UK's larges rock dedicated radio station. The official Bauer media website states that the station has 920,000 weekly listeners around the world.

The station started broadcasting for a short period in early 2002 on a restricted signal transmitted from the ground of Birmingham City Football club where it could be reached by people living in the west midlands however it was not until the end of that year that Kerrang's parent company "EMap"    

made the station available on Freeview radio as well as on the Freeview TV service. The station can be accessed on the radio tuning of Freeview: 171.  The station was also one of the first to adopt an online platform starting in 2002 at the website I have linked below:
https://planetradio.co.uk/kerrang/

On the 23rd of may 2013 the Bauer media took over the tuning used by Kerrang purchasing, and reducing the radio service. This wasn't a surprise for many viewers as that the popularity of the type of music which Kerrang promotes as well as the "Emo" subculture which it is strongly associated with had waned from the early 2000s when it was popular.

audience and Content:

As stated before the Kerrang radio station offers music entertainment for an alternative audience. On their official audience profile describes the average consumer as:

Note: This audience profile comes from a report made for the Kerrang magazine however I feel that it is representative of the average Kerrang Radio listener as that both entity's keep a consistent brand and discuss the same topics. 

The audience is described as having a median age of 19 and being media savvy which would certainly coincide with Kerrang's digital presence.

The Description of the audience certainly fits with the "emo" subculture that I mentioned earlier on as that people with a strong essence of individuality and that age group are usually as associated with that culture. 

As that this is the  audience that the station is aimed at the content will obviously cater to them. This can be seen in the music that is played on the station. This type of music would typically fit in to the "Pop- Punk", "Rock" and "Metal" genres of music which is popular with this demographic. This would include acts such as "Green Day" (who can be seen in this audience profile), "Paramore", "Fall Out Boy" and "My Chemical Romance" who were all very popular with this audience in the 2000s

Recently however Kerrang has started to branch out with the type of music they play with older acts such as "Motorhead" and "Iron maiden" being played on the show. personally I believe that this new style of music I being used by Kerrang as to keep the attention of a per- existing audience which is growing older and losing interest in the music which was played when the show began. The fans of the music that the station used to play can still listen to the "Kerrang! Radio Klassics" show which airs at 1pm the music on this show ranges from The Hives "Hate to Say I Told you so" to Rage Against the Machine "Renegades of Funk."

At 7 in the morning until 10 Kerrang has a breakfast show hosted by Sophie K. The show had music for around an hour and then went into a fairly average News section with stories abut new Laws in the UK which would give Grandparents the legal right to see their grandchildren, the Donald Trump and Stormi Daniels controversy as well as a story about the manager of Arsenal FC retiring. All of these stories would likely appeal to the social media savvy audience that the station aims it's programming at.  

Advertising and Income:
As I have already stated Kerrang is owned by Bauer media who provide the company with the income which they need to keep the show airing at aporfessional standard. This means that Kerrnang has to air advertisements however so that Bauer can make a profit from the show. While listening to the station I heard advertisements for "CEX", "The Co-Op" and "Virgin Media".  these are all very large companies who are targeting the young adult audience which Kerrang makes content for.