This study considers the practice of freelance radio producers creating music documentaries for commercial radio audiences. Commercial radio is an underexplored field of study, while investigations into music documentary content for commercial broadcasters are even more uncommon. Previous inquiries into radio documentary production have focused on public service models of broadcasting. These studies often view the subject from a journalistic agenda, overlooking technical approaches and ignoring the commercial imperatives that inform freelance practices. I explore how advances in digital production tools and online technologies shape the work of radio producers. I address wider issues of debate surrounding freelance activities and question whether autonomous producers are capable of creating music documentary content of a calibre consistent with traditional team approaches to documentary production. As an experienced practitioner in the field of commercial radio, I use a practice-based approach to reveal the practices a freelance radio producer adopts to make music documentaries for commercial radio. I argue that this method is essential in order to capture an accurate, first-hand perspective of contemporary industry practice. It draws on a combination of data collection methods including iterative production research, industry interviews, and auto-ethnographic observations as a freelance radio producer across a five-year period of production. This data is interrogated using a theoretical framework that incorporates ideas of political economy, commercial broadcasting and documentary production. I find that the advances in digital production tools and online technologies have streamlined workflow processes and enabled the merging of a various duties into a single production role. I argue that political, economic and commercial considerations impact on the work of radio freelancers in the field by shaping their production output. I acknowledge this is a highly specialised field, as music documentaries are not commonly heard on commercial radio. Yet I assert the industry is favourable towards this form of programming, and recognises its ability to attract new audiences, strengthen listener loyalty and reinforce a station’s brand.

“Voice in Radio” is a practice-based thesis. It reflects on a series of participatory media projects involving community groups and secondary school students working together to produce radio shows. The thesis offers an analysis of those projects through the academic prism of ‘voice’, a term defined in both the personal and socio-political senses. Further, it reflects on the possibilities for voice offered by Participatory Community Radio (PCR) practice. Having devised and led this practice, I occupy the position of a ‘reflexive practitioner’ in the study. The thesis is presented as a linear narrative: through PCR, a participant hears their own physical voice as others do, externally; they first become accustomed to and then comfortable with the sound of their own voice; they gain agency, becoming able to vocalise their stories through the radio project work; they gain further agency through socio-political Voice as their work is aired in a series of radio shows. The participant groups are from a selection of cohorts encompassing a ‘Senior Citizens West Indian Luncheon and Social club’, a boys’ secondary school, a hospice, an Arts school and a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU). The data presented were collected through a mixed methods strategy. Project work and participant reflections are offered, together with comments from associated professionals. This material features in both written and aural form. The ideas of authors including Berry, Chomsky, Couldry, Coyer, Dowmunt, Mayo and Rodenburg are drawn upon to establish the project work within a framework for discussion. Conclusions are offered on the possibilities of PCR in a neo-liberal economic and cultural climate specifically in relation to empowerment, voice and exchange. An hour-long audio CD accompanies the written thesis as an illustration of the PCR practice under review. Combined, these two elements offer an investigation into “Voice in Radio”.

This thesis discusses the state of contemporary audio drama in the US, the UK, and Europe, looking particularly at drama in public service broadcasting contexts and within commercial format radio and within newer, Web-based forms.