Television and Radio

These are different but related domains.

As mass media they both can convey a variety of information as entertainment, news, educational material etc. the way in which they do this is governed by certain conventions of style, a set of guidelines laid down by the broadcasting authorities and owners or governors reacting to an audience and the pressures of market forces and public opinion.

The best way to identify the similarities and differences of the medium is to watch similar programmes on a variety of channels and evaluate their output. Listening to a short news broadcast on, say, a local radio station, Radio 1, Radio 4, Classic FM and a local commercial station will show considerable differences in content and in style.

The following check list might be a starting point:

Lexis (vocabulary, jargon, neologisms etc)

Phonology (accent, supra-segmental phonemes etc)

Syntax (sentence complexity, noun phrases, clause structure)

Style (including formality)

Content (bias, emphasis, selection etc)

Context (other information surrounding the broadcast, what precedes and what follows it)

Use this alongside a more detailed check list such as whether the news uses music, sounds authoritative, in which order and at what length each item is broadcast, whether there are follow-up interviews, whether the news reader ventures a personal opinion, what the supposed audience is ...

The results of your observations of each broadcast can now be tabulated and contrasted.