[ 5. The Xfm Site | Richard Bacon ]

[ The Xfm Richard Bacon Section www.xfm.co.uk/bacon ]

Richard Bacon’s own section of the Xfm website is devoted to him and his narrowcasted drive-time radio show from 4-7pm. It is humorous and often the jokes are at Richard Bacon’s expense. His website acts as a support for his show and has archives of features that were aired previously, prizes, plus reviews, YouTube pick-of-the-day, interviews with special guests and Bacon Offcuts:

This where all the scrappy, chewy bits of indigestible radio left over from
Richard's show live. All the salty, unpalatable, leftover bits that don’t really
fit anywhere else get out here so you can peruse them at your leisure like a
tramp outside Subway after closing time.

As this shows, Bacon has no hang-ups about being the subject of humour and puns with his name, and this makes his site more appealing to the target audience.

[ In Detail ]
The site has the same layout as the rest of the Xfm site, with the same banners and borders. There are also many different sections inside Bacon’s site. The section named “The Catchphrase Gallery” allows listeners to email in a pictorial representation of any one of Bacon’s catchphrases, such as “At Ease”, “Yes, yes” or “Breasts”. The comic nature of this lightens the tone, and gives the audience a chance to have their picture displayed to everyone via this page, effectively the new technologies are allowing Bacon to entertain his listeners more and make the relationship a little more interactive, instead of him talking and playing music on his radio station, the listeners can also get in touch with him. Most of the features on his site allow the audience to get in touch with him via email, such as sending in their favourite YouTube video clip for the web page [ video clip ] for them to embed into the website or the 5 o’clock shuffle where listeners can request their 3 favourite songs to be played on air, or indeed the Feedback Track where listeners feed back on a newly released song played first on Xfm.
Bacon’s site does not use new media technology to its full potential, but it serves a great purpose, uses it for good benefit. However, it is a very good example of democratisation and interactivity.