Samantha Massa Comm 303 Blog

This weekend I was in my car and I was listening to my favorite radio station, Z100.  This station plays all of the hit songs that are newly released.  Whenever the songs are over and commercials are about to start, I always change the station until I find another station with songs on.  However this weekend was different because I actually listened to Z100 present a news story during their song break.

This story was interesting to me because it was about Madonna and her new school that she is opening for orphaned girls.  The introduction of this story answered the questions: who, what, when, where, and why. The radio announcer very quickly stated that Madonna returned to Malawi where she adopted two children to see construction of a school for orphaned girls she funded. They did this by launching a new education campaign with their new technology.

I noticed that this story was different from the ones I am used to reading in newspapers or entertainment magazines.  On the radio the announcer speaks in shorter and more precise sentences.  Rather than drawing out the facts and information, radio announcers quickly get to the point.  I also noticed that this news story did not have any sound bites, which I found to be a little odd since this was a radio news story.

Along with the short sentences, the radio announcer did not use appositions.  Without the use of these, it was a lot easier to understand because it did not slow down the news announcer and I was able to keep up with the story being told. One last thing I noticed was that the first sentence of the story on Z1o0 caught my attention and kept me wanting to listen to more of the story. I thought that this was very important because if the first sentence is not entertaining, the listener will quickly change the station until they find something that will catch their attention.