Organisational structures: Radio, TV and News Agencies
Published by Emil Abraham,
Radio station
Radio is one of the important inventions of the 20th Century, which has changed the overall meaning of the term mass communication. The parallel changes in technology have made the radio more powerful in terms of the impact they have upon masses. Radio reaches almost everyone everywhere.
Radio involves the process, by which the messages are sent through electrical waves. In other words, sound would be sent and received through the waves
Functioning of a Radio Station
A radio station comprises of three different wings
1. Programme wing
2. Engineering wing
3. Administration wing
The programme wing and Engineering wing are responsible for running a radio station’s broadcast, while the administrative wing provides all the support that is required for the functioning of the station.
The management or administrative Department looks into Human Resources (HR), Public Relations (PR),Accounts and Business areas.
The Programme department is led by a Programme Director who oversees planning, research and production of programmes. There are two types of staff:
a) On air talent like DJ who may not be a regular staff
b) Production Directors, Programme Executives who supervise programmes.
Some radio stations have a Sales Department consisting of Account executives, Advertising managers, and sales representatives.
Working of a Radio Station
Radio management is a multifaceted activity. A radio station is where the radio programmes are produced and transmitted to a heterogeneous mass audience, spread over a large geographical area.
The station directs diverse range of programmes at certain hours to specific audience groups. Radio station management involves the coordination of a number of specialized activities; programming, engineering, sales promotion, business administration etc. To control each and every station, there are different departments with heads.
Radio Studio
A radio studio is sound proofed and hemmed with shielding in the walls to prevent any unwanted sound to come in. It is done, so as the listeners can get clear voice of the presenter or the music or any other thing. To meet these standards, the studio is provided with sound lock and heavy doors along with walls shielded with perforated wooden panels.
The studio looks nice with proper air-conditioning. There are two rooms in a radio studio, one is discussed above, where the technicians sit and work. The other is smaller in size than the previous one, but exactly same in specification. This room is used by the announcer or the presenter with a microphone in front of the table. The microphone has a windscreen to ensure clarity of sound and to keep extraneous noise to the minimum such as the sound of a popping ‘P’. There will be a computer, CD players, tape decks and a mixer. This is the actual broadcast studio from where presenters make announcements. The studio also has a VU Meter to measure the level of sound output. Besides the on-air studio, every radio station has a production studio where commercials are assembled, music is recorded.
Control Room
It is the main technical area of the radio station. Every recorded voice either announcements or from a CD player or computer is sent to this room. From here, these things are sent to the transmitter. Further, they are transmitted to the listeners. The control room occupies an important place in the radio broadcast. The console controls audio mix from live or recorded sources. It is the place, connected with all the other segments of broadcast. The technicians control the process of receiving sound waves and transmitting it further. There is no time gap in the whole process.
Studio-> Control Room-> (CR) -> Transmitter (XTR) -> Listener
Transmitter
Transmitters are the devices which transmit the sound signals to the listeners. It is generally located outside the city boundaries. The transmitters are of different capacities such as 1 KW to 100 KW, 200 KW or 250 KW or above. Their locations are decided according to their capacity. A 1 KW transmitter is normally installed in the vicinity of the studio, whereas the high power transmitters are installed outside the city. It is the transmitter through, which we receive the radio broadcast on our sets. It is big in size as compared to other equipments installed in the studio or the control room.
There are two types of transmitters
1. Low Power Transmitter (LPT)
2. High Power Transmitter (HPT)
Likewise, there are
1. Medium Wave (MW) radio broadcast transmitters
2. Short Wave (SW) radio broadcast transmitters
Television
Every Television channel produces programmes in their own style and choice. These programmes are produced and transmitted by the joint effort of many skilled workers like the managing director, journalist, reporter, floor manager, anchor, copy editor, sound engineer etc.
News channel is the time-bound news transmission unit. The news head or channel head is the highest officer. Under him, the reporter, cameraman, bulletin producer work with news collected from different parts of the country and abroad. All the news that comes to the newsroom is edited. The copy editor and bulletin producer give the news a final shape for transmission. The video and bites collected from field or agency are added into the script before transmission. The timeframe of a news bulletin is fixed, therefore it cannot be extended unless a situation calls for it.
Every organization has its own organizational setup which makes it run. Every organization action is very important, if we are talking about TV channels then we must first know that, it is an organisation where every second counts. Therefore, it is very important to have highly efficient organizational setup. One TV channel can create high value products, name and credible to its viewers. Often, the economic condition of a channel decides its organizational structure.
Firstly, it is important to know government-owned National broadcaster’s organisation Doordarshan. In India, in every Doordarshan centre there is a Regional Director, heading 3 important departments.
They are:
1. Programme Department: In the programme department there is one functional producer who leads a team of producers and assistant producers. The duty of the Programme Department is to produce interesting news, information and entertainment programmes.
2. Administrative Department: The administrative departments looks after the administrative work of the organisation. The Administrative Department, headed by a section officer, ensures the smooth functioning of all other departments.
3. Technical department: The department is run under the direct supervision of the Station Engineer. Under the central technical department, Executive Engineers run the show. The department has Programme transmission room, control room, electrical engineer, sound engineer and computer engineer.
Other then government setup, various private channels also have established news channels. The organizational setup of private news channels is very different government channels. There can also be differences in the way two private channels are set up.
Private Television Channel
President or Managing Director; BusinessManager; Producer; Presenter; Copy Editor; Reporter
President or Managing Director: He is the head of TV news channel. He is chief of the services, differently some channels has an owner who works as the representative of the owner. In some channels managing director is over all incharge, he looks after production advertisement, finance, etc along with management of liaisons and relationship. He is the decision making authority. To reduce his burden of work in some channels there maybe a vice-president who carries out these decisions taken by the managing director regarding smooth functioning and policy matters. There may be News Directors under the vice president. They work as head of news bureau, under their direct supervision the production and transmission of news is done. They give the direction to which news should be given imp. To do such work in some channels there maybe chief news editors, news editor has some assisting staff like news co- ordinator. He works as a bridge between Newsdesk and Editor.
Producer: There may be more than one producer in one news channels. A group of producers prepare news bulletin and the second group prepare special attractive programmes over the recent events. Daily news bulletin is prepared under the direct supervision of first producers. To prepare hourly bulletin is his main work. He is also called the bulletin producer. The second category producers are called programme producers. By transmission of fresh news they engage viewers, is his chief motive, News channels work 24x7 so every time different news transmission.
Copy Editor: To help the producers, a group of copy editors work, every time when new news comes in it is their duty to prepare correct and speedy bulletin.
Presenter: They are the face of the channel. General public know the channel through the news caster or anchor. They are very popular among general public. The popular and reliability of a news channel depends upon a good news caster. Viewers regularly see the channels because of the presentation skills of the anchor. Their main job is to present the news in proper manner.
Reporter: The backbone of a TV news channel is the reporter. They are connected to the society, they reach the spot as soon as they get information were the incident has happened and get the information. They immediately inform the office about the event. Main duty to send collected info to news desk, due active dedicated work of news reporter the news channel becomes lively.
Cameraperson: Those who accompany the reporters to the incident spot and take photos or videos are known are camerapersons. Understanding the importance of the event and morality of journalism they take the pictures with care.
Persons discussed above work under the news division. In addition to this a team of technical persons work in news channel. IT, RF broadcast, MCR, PCR, Electricals, Electronic, sound are the technical persons. Without their help it is not possible to telecast news in time.
Business Manager: In addition to this every news channel has a business manager. Under him a number of business executives. Their main work is to collect revenues through advertisements. Along with this they also try to improve viewership of the channel.
Editor: The editor links write-up received from different sources are with visuals, with proper timing and editing. They remain present in the editing room meticulously edit and connect the news write-up and visuals eliminating the unnecessary part. They maintain the balance and equality in every news item.
New Agencies
News agency, also called press agency, press association, wire service, or news service, organization that gathers, writes, and distributes news from around a nation or the world to newspapers, periodicals, radio and television broadcasters, government agencies, and other users. It does not generally publish news itself but supplies news to its subscribers, who, by sharing costs, obtain services they could not otherwise afford. All the mass media depend upon the agencies for the bulk of the news, even including those few that have extensive news-gathering resources of their own.
The world’s first news agency, Agence France-Presse AFP, was established in 1835. Traditionally a news agency provides services for newspapers and broadcasting companies and has often been owned by them. Many of them operate cooperatively and generate their news as sort of wholesalers on the customers' behalf. Particularly in smaller countries there tends to be one national news agency which dominates the market.
The core values for news agencies are reliability, speed, impartiality and independence. As one of the agencies, the German DPA charter, states: "Reporting must be free of bias and unfettered by political, economic or governmental ideologies."
Currently many of the news agency customers are suffering from the global recession and the decline of the media market especially in western countries. The changes in the market caused by the internet, loss of advertising and decreasing circulation are weakening the financial position of many of the media companies. For the news agencies the changed situation is challenging.
News agencies differ from other media organizations because of their nature as wholesalers. The news agency distributes its stories and other materials to a large number of customers who either publish the stories as they are or use them as background or supplementary material for the newspaper, radio station, website, TV channel etc. Because of the nature of the news agency business there is a lack of direct contact with media customers and the consumers.
The journalists who work for a news agency don't know beforehand how the customers are going to use the story or the picture - or if they are going to use it at all. A news agency journalist does not get as much feedback from the audience as a newspaper or broadcast journalist because the relationship between the news agency journalist and his audience is relatively distant and in some cases anonymous. For a reader or a listener it is natural and easy to contact the local newspaper or radio station and give some feedback. The media organizations are even tempting their audiences to do so ("call us, email us, send a picture, a video, post a Facebook or Twitter comment") but the news agency does not have this possibility. The medium wants to direct its audience to contact the particular medium, not a news agency.
Many news agencies are owned by national media and broadcasting corporations and companies. The most significant exceptions are Thomson Reuters, a commercial company and the Dutch ANP, a private company, which are operating independently in the media and commercial market.
The ability to transmit news rapidly greatly increased during the 20th century. Radioteleprinters that make possible fast automatic transmission of news messages linked all major areas. Picture transmission by radio and high-fidelity wires became well developed. From the major agencies, teletypesetter service, pioneered by the Associated Press in 1951, was available to newspapers wishing to have computerized typesetting done directly from news-service transmissions. By the 21st century, most news agencies had moved the bulk of their operations and transmission to computers.