About Broadcasting

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What is radio broadcasting?

Radio is everywhere - in your home, car, office and factory, shopping mall and hairdressers. Radio is hard to avoid, even if you wanted to.

When we listen to the radio, we are often alone. The presenter speaks to us as an individual. Radio is immediate, intimate and personal. It is fast, informal, informative and reliable.

Much of radio is live. This requires very different talents from those needed on TV, which is mostly pre-recorded. As an on-air presenter, announcer or DJ, you must be able to think fast, speak clearly and express yourself well. You will need a good general knowledge and an easy manner because you never know who you might meet today - it could be the Prime Minister or it could be a young musician taking his or her first steps on their way to the top.

A staggering 91% of the British population aged 15 and over listen to the radio every day.

The average person listens to the radio for over an hour a day. It is often the first point of news and the first sound we hear in the morning. Digital radio (or DAB) is rapidly expanding, and offers an increasing number of national, local and niche-audience stations.

This makes radio a vibrant and fast moving sector. It also makes it a very attractive area in which to work. It reaches and touches millions. But to achieve this apparently simple feat of mass communication involves a great deal of activity and skill behind the scenes.

Radio relies on close-knit teamwork in which every person plays an important part - whether they are the BBC's Director of Radio, a broadcast assistant on a local news programme, the head of the GWR/Capital commercial radio conglomerate or the receptionist on the front desk.

As with any media job, it's perceived as glamorous and therefore highly paid, but don't expect to make your fortune working in radio! People work in radio because they love it, not because they want to make their first million!