This degree provides intensive professional training by active practitioners, along with modules in media analysis and contextual practice. This course is accredited by Skillset, the Government-backed industry body.

You will spend roughly half your time engaged on practice/ production-based work, and half your time addressing issues of context and theory concerning the media. Some ‘fusion’ modules combine both practice and analysis. Media analysis enables you to develop a critical understanding of the media industries, their products and their audiences. You learn how to analyse media output and examine the relationships between media, society, politics, culture and technology. The lecturers are among the top names in their field. We firmly believe that this balance delivers a rigorous and intellectually stimulating education, along with serious, professional training for a job in the media.

Year 1 (Credit Level 4)

You begin with an Introduction to Radio module, which gives you an overview of the radio industry in the UK, examines genres and formats, looks at media law and ethical issues and discusses research techniques. You are then introduced to basic production skills, and practice interview techniques, editing, mixing and ‘live’ studio operation. These skills are developed in Further Radio Production Skills, which includes multi-track editing and web audio and a module dealing with news production, Journalism for Radio. You are also introduced to the frameworks within which the media operate and some of the major theoretical tools for analysing them, in the modules Media and Society, and Story, Sound, Image and Text.

Year 2 (Credit Level 5)

Practice

You will take a compulsory module in News and Magazine Programmes, which will cover all aspects of live radio including news, talk, short features and music. In Radio Features you will work on ‘textured’ radio features, made on high-end digital editing equipment. Optional radio modules include Music Radio and Internet Radio and Podcasting. You can also choose other optional modules selected from Commercial Music practice or a subject-specialist journalism module.

Analysis

After the first year you have two compulsory modules – Media Transformations, and Network Society and the Media – combining theory and analysis. You then have a choice of analysis modules. You have to take two in Year 2 and two in Year 3. We currently offer: Advertising and Promotional Culture • Audience Studies • Celebrity Culture and the Media • Contemporary Issues in Media Policy • Creativity • Cultural Industries and Media Markets • Media around the Globe • Multiculturalism and the Media • News and Public Opinion • Religion and the Media • Sex, Violence and Censorship • Sound, Music and the Media

Year 3 (Credit Level 6)

In your final year you take an extended module, Final Radio Projects, which involves making a series of complex and creative live radio programmes and a piece of individual audio, which might be a documentary, a social action campaign or a series of podcasts. You will normally take one or two more analysis modules of choice (see Year 2 for options), as you need at least four of these to graduate. To complete the analytical work, you will produce an academic dissertation on any subject concerned with media or communication. In the first semester, you are offered seminars on different methods of research and help in choosing your topic through workshops and tutorials. By the end of the first semester, you will have chosen a subject and been allocated a supervisor. You will complete your research and write up the dissertation in the second semester.

Facilities

Westminster continues to develop and enhance the radio facilities and has just completed an extensive refurbishment of the radio studios at Harrow. The work has seen the entire re-building of the studios, with state-of-the-art digital desks installed.

Away from the studios, students are always encouraged to produce outside broadcasts, for example using the studios in Commercial Music, or from the radio studio on the Cavendish site. Our equipment currently consists of:

• three self-op broadcast studios equipped with Logitech digital desks, and RCS Mastercontrol and Selector
• a self-op studio used by Smoke Radio
• a production suite of 24 PCs - each with Adobe Audition, Burli, news & audio feeds from IRN and web software
• a separate suite of nine SADiE high-end editing computers
• 40 portable flash card recorders
• A set of ‘Tieline’ devices which allow outside broadcasts from remote locations

Radio programmes are transmitted across the campus via The Matrix (an integrated broadcast circuit), so student programmes can be heard in the shop, the bar and the canteen. We also broadcast student work via the web and are in the process of expanding our facilities with the opening of a small satellite studio in the heart of the west end, at our Cavendish site.

Work placement

From the second year to the end of the third year (including vacations) you are encouraged to do as many work placements as possible. Work experience is a degree requirement, and you will need to find your own placements and write reports on your work.

Teaching and Assessment

All the practice tutors are experienced professionals, many of whom are active in their field. There are two semesters each year and you will normally study three or four modules in each one. Practice is scheduled for two days a week, although you are expected to work outside these days when necessary. Media analysis lectures are one hour a week with one-hour seminars on the same day.

There are no closed-book exams as all practical work is assessed on output and a ‘log book’, and all theory work is assessed on essays and performance in seminars. You can take advantage of our popular study abroad agreements with overseas universities.

Associated Careers

Our students have a very high success rate in gaining employment in radio and the associated media industries. The skills you learn and the ability to work in teams or alone are highly valued across media employment. Recent graduates have gone to work for the BBC and the commercial radio sector (as broadcast assistants and producers, studio managers and researchers), as well as embarking on careers in digital media as web content producers.

Typical offer for September 2011