,,He’d just keep blabbering on if they don’t stop him”

Abstract

Radio listeners often recognize in a manner of seconds what station or, at least, what kind of format they have just tuned in. Presenters seem to play an important role in creating the typical sound, the so called channel identity of a station. But what do listeners actually regard as being typical in a station’s presentation so that they will recognize it among competing stations? How would they describe their impression? The project presented here aims to form a description profile for the typical presentation of a German radio station, using descriptions made by the listeners themselves. To achieve this, a survey method is used which combines the advantages of qualitative and quantitative research. Its core is a modified version of the Repertory Grid technique. 32 listeners of a German public youth radio station had been interviewed this way. Furthermore, a pilot study was made using the German stimuli with 6 Danish radio listeners. By comparing the German and the Danish interviews, remarkable similarities were found in the descriptions the participants used. This indicates that, apart from content and lexical choice, the sound of radio presentation is an important cue for listeners to differentiate presentation styles and that there might be a similar radio listening culture in Denmark and Germany. Some first results of these two studies will be presented here.