Community Media/MARAA/Community Radio/Formats

Formats for Radio
The popular formats for radio are:


 * Jingle - Lasts about 30 seconds to a minute, summarizing the identity of a station, or an advertisement or a social message
 * Report - Talks about hard facts, lasts anywhere between 5 minutes to 15 minutes
 * Feature - Can address soft stories, human interest stories and are slightly longer than reports
 * News - Summarizes local events
 * Documentary - Longer radio format, which usually explores an issue in great detail, with in-depth analysis etc
 * Drama - Can be used imaginatively, needs actors, and needs a well written script and coordination amongst actors. This can be episodic as well.
 * Interview - Involves two people, one asking questions and the other answering questions.
 * Panel Discussion - One person coordinates and facilitates a discussion between two or more people who usually differ in their opinions
 * Debate - One person facilitates a discussion between two people who have opinions, in support and against a given issue
 * Phone in program - One or two hosts sitting at the studio can invite phone calls from the community members, usually on a single issue.
 * Voxpop - A short program which collates short opinion bytes from people on a usually prevalent issue
 * Radio Magazine - Like a print magazine, a hotchpotch of various formats strung together, usually on a single theme.
 * Talk Show - An anchor or sometimes two anchors talk about something with audio excerpts (clips/music) in between
 * Phone in show - An anchor takes requests from listeners through the phone (either music or answers to questions)

Apart from these popular formats, there are many many more formats, which one can discover along the exciting journey of radio production. These are merely rules and regulations followed by radio so far. It is important to keep them in mind, so you can break these rules to chart out new formats!!