The Functions and Features of Verbalics on a Radio Station Format Easy Listening

Abstract

Today music formats occupy a predominant number of frequencies in the Russian FM-range. Despite digital television and radio broadcasting conversion and the related internal and external modernization of the industry, radio stations continue to actively compete for the listener by offering new approaches to broadcasting and winning an audience. The number of radio stations in the modern world remains at a consistently high level, although, it is understandable that the dynamics of its growth does not have the speed it used to have a hundred years ago: for example, the number of radio stations in the United States during “the golden era” of broadcasting from 1927 to 1940 years had grown 116 times (Sterling and Kittross, 2001). Today, one of the rarest music formats in Russia is the Easy Listening format, which is partly represented by the Relax FM radio station. In addition to music programs, the Relax FM radio broadcastings include thematic rubrics and short speech programs that make a significant contribution to the overall concept of this radio station. The article discusses the verbal components at the radio station of the Easy Listening format, their functions and features. In order to analyze the speech elements of the studied radio, the methods of observation and content analysis, as well as some other empirical and general scientific methods were used. The results were interpreted on the basis of the percentage of music and speech on the airwaves, as well as the ratio of the average timing of the commercial break, built using verbalics, and the average timing of the thematic category. In addition, the speech analysis of verbal components showed how the difference in the essential approach to speech in the advertising unit and in the thematic rubric affects the general speech discourse of the radio. Thus, the main functions of verbal components on the radio station of the Easy Listening format can definitely be considered to be informational, advertising, recreational and educational functions. The features of speech components are in the field of message semantics, as well as in terms of vocabulary and intonation, aimed at supporting the general concept of broadcasting. A separate speech group consists of advertising messages that are significantly different from the specific mood of the radio, but which, in doing so, are designed to support the very existence of the radio station. These provisions ultimately entail the possibility of new research in the field of linguistics of radio programs, psycholinguistics, and the management of the broadcasting industry.