Abstract

The music that children are exposed to in their everyday lives plays an important role in shaping the way they interpret the world around them, and television soundtracks are, together with their direct experience of reality, one of the most significant sources of such input. This work is part of a broader research project that looks at what kind of music children listen to in a sample of Latin American and Spanish TV programmes. More specifically, this study focuses on children’s programmes in Spain, and was addressed using a semiotic theoretical framework with a quantitative and musical approach. The programme «Los Lunnis» was chosen as the subject of a preliminary study, which consisted in applying 90 templates and then analysing them in terms of the musical content. The results show that the programme uses music both as the leading figure and as a background element. The most common texture is the accompanied monody and the use of voice, and there is a predominance of electronic instrumental sounds, binary stress and major modes with modulations. Musical pieces are sometimes truncated and rhythmically the music is quite poor; the style used is predominantly that of foreign popular music, with a few allusions to the classical style and to incidental music. The data reveal the presence of music in cultural and patrimonial aspects, as well as in cognitive construction, which were not taken into account in studies on the influence of TV in Spain. Such aspects do emerge, however, when they are reviewed from the perspective of semiotics, musical representation, formal analysis and restructuring theories.

Abstract

  This article describes the most comprehensive study of the relationship between Generation Z and radio carried out in Spain to date, broadening the focus beyond data known from previous research and offering a structural view of the market from the perspective of media economics. An in-depth analysis of data previously unused in academic research, as well as interviews with the managers of various private radio companies (Ábside Media, Atresmedia Radio, Podium Podcast-Prisa Radio, and Grup Flaix), reveals the gradual loss of contact of Generation Z with this medium and highlights the characteristics of the low radio consumption by this cohort in Spain. Among other conclusions, the study identifies some of the factors which may prove relevant to attract this generation to content produced by radio companies, since there is the conviction that there is still time to reverse this situation. Examples include the development of exclusive digital content, brand maximization and community building, content designed and produced by Generation Z for Generation Z, the combination of paid and free access, and media literacy as a transversal public–private factor. This is a need that the sector must address as a whole.