Have You Heard The News- The Year In Review

December 14, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Portfolio Piece

I believe that this project is a strong portfolio piece and I would include it in my demo. Numerous different websites state the importance of having a good a demo which is essential for getting into radio and i intend to put this piece into my demo when I apply for jobs. It is also very different from previous items that I have in my demo currently meaning it will be stronger and help me to get a job.

In terms of what people look for in a demo, the website the pips suggest that the best part of the programmes you have worked on previously should be included so from this project I would probably utilise items that are in the trails for social media as they are the funniest bits. The pips also warn against humour as this is quite polarising however I believe that our humour isn’t very polarising and is generally understandable. They also suggest that you shouldn’t over produce a demo and that there shouldn’t be a lot of sound effects and jingles in a demo, again we didn’t use many of these, however, the one area that may be off slight issue is that we did include music beds underneath and I may have to come back and remove these for the demo.

http://www.thepips.co.uk/hints-tips/demo-tips/

The student radio association also has tips on what is good for a demo with one of the most important beings that you should target your demo for different stations, while this is not entirely relevant for this objective there is a similarity as it would be advisable to have more of this project if I was applying for a podcast related job etc. Again the next point is not entirely relevant but still relates as they suggest that you should be strong-willed and determined to make it into the industry and take criticism on the chin which is off great importance for making it into the radio industry as a whole.

10 Top industry tips on the perfect radio demo

I also believe that it is a strong piece as we have hit all of the commisioning guidelines that were set out in the original commissioning document and as a result, the project should be good to listen too as if we have achieved them this would transfer to the project being strong in a portfolio, especially at Radio 1 due to them being the ones who oversee the guidelines.

December 14, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Learning Objective- Experimental content

As has been demonstrated in previous blog posts about Radio 1’s current podcasts here. I believe that we have created something that is innovative and experimental as Radio 1’s current podcasts bar one are not intended to stand on their own as they all accompany a pre-existing radio programme that airs daily such as the Breakfast show or Greg James’ drive-time programme. Whereas our podcast will be a stand-alone item that is intended to be a stand-alone podcast which is what the brief asked for, despite it also saying that some may be broadcast in the early hours of the morning. There are also very few podcasts that are clip-based with the ones that I discussed in this blog post proving this point, bar We Need To Talk About which is clip based but isn’t really a comedy podcast in the grand schemes of things, however, it is panel based.

Whereas Radio 1’s older comedy output which I talk about here is much more risky in terms of what they talk about and much more spontaneous than what is outputted today and these older programmes also had a lot more political discussion within them such as skits that involved politicians whereas nowadays this does not exist. This is where Have You Heard The News- The Year in Review can come into its own as it is experimental as Radio 1 doesn’t output any is comedy, it is more under the entertainment strand such ass the 8th by Charlie Sloth and Greg James’ programme. It also doesn’t touch politics in any of it’s output. Furthermore, not many podcasts talk about Politics or are clip based meaning that we are innovative in the way that we put together our programme as we have mixed creating a live radio programme with a stand-alone podcast and our recording process was based on a live programme that we edited to make a podcast utilising a different approach.

Overall I believe this demonstrates I have achieved my learning objective of the podcast being experimental and the content of the podcast is not safe as it is an unmediated conversation about topics that people have differing opinions on and the approach that we have taken in creating the podcast has also been different from content that currently exists.

December 13, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Justification

Ever since the Marry Whitehouse experiment there hasn’t really been any satirical comedy based around politics for young people with this being placed instead on Radio 4 which can be viewed as a natural place due to its spoken word content, however, the audience is drastically different which is proven in the blog post here, meaning that there is not really a place for young people’s comedy on any BBC Radio Network. Yet at the same time as this, there is more and more political engagement in young people as proven by the voting statistics in the most recent general election where 67% voted and in the European referendum where 64% voted and as a result had a massive effect on the outcome of both. (Financial Times, 2017) (The Independent,2016)

Furthermore, more than ever young people are seeing political news and content shared on Facebook with millions being spent on social media advertising in the recent election by political parties (Financial Times, 2017). Ultimately this means that young people are engaged in politics and as a result, relevant political comedy, such as Spotify launching their podcast called We need to talk about.

At the same time as this Radio 1 is now aiming to be more podcast based than it has been previously under this new commissioning brief that has been established (here) and the one that we intend to fulfil through this project. However in the wider context, this is not unexpected as Radio 1 has been described as competing against the likes of Minecraft and Netflix and as a result, needs to adapt itself to be more of an on-demand service so that it can provide the content that a listener wants and when they want and the importance of a truly multiplatform station through the likes of Youtube and Facebook (Guardian, 2016)

Ben Cooper the controller of Radio 1 has previously stated the importance of Radio 1’s content being built for phones and listeners enjoying it on the move and I believe that our programme Have You Heard The News A Year In Review is suitable to fulfil this. (Guardian,2017)

This is shown within their strategy of Listen Watch Share, which means that they encourage listeners to initial listen to a programme then watch the videos or other supporting content from it on Twitter or Facebook and then share this via the same medium to encourage more people to listen to the original programme. Ultimately this to build up a multiplatform environment for Radio 1 to exist in rather being solely one platform.

Overall I believe that this justifies why we have the potential to launch a new political based podcast on Radio 1 as there is nothing like this out for young people bar commercial alternatives and the BBC should be leading the way in outputting new and experimental comedy and content which I believe Have You Heard The News The Year in Review is.

https://www.ft.com/content/6734cdde-550b-11e7-9fed-c19e2700005f

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-brexit-turnout-young-voters-youth-vote-double-a7129181.html

https://www.ft.com/content/d1c854f0-4cea-11e7-a3f4-c742b9791d43

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/19/bbc-radio-1-aims-to-be-netflix-of-music-radio-with-phone-first-strategy

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/03/ben-cooper-radio-1-up-against-minecraft-young-audiences

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04x2k75

December 13, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Software

To produce the podcast

Software

We used the RadioLogik software to play out our clips as nothing else was free and available for Mac. The software wasn’t overly complex to use as I was able to just drag in our clips from an ITunes playlist I had created earlier. The software used two playout carts where you where able to alter volume, and the speed of playing the clip. The only issue I did encounter was that as it was free it would after thirty minutes make you wait for a minute to reactivate it and encourage you to pay for the software.

Audition

To get the clips I used audition routed through a piece of software called soundflower which allowed me to record my speaker output through audition meaning I could play the clip then edit it to the correct length in audition.

Pro tools

This is the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software we recorded the audio into via the studio desk and was also what we used to edit the piece into the final mix down. This was because both me and James own a copy of Pro Tools meaning the editing process was a lot more streamlined and as a result was much easier as we both knew what we were doing on it.

December 13, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Recording

The recording process started well as we went to the studio 4 hours before we needed to to go through clips and check they were in the right hour, it also allowed us to check over basic things such as whether there was a headphone feed etc. After we had done everything we then tried to get a signal into the Mac so that we could record the programme, however this proved near impossible and despite our best efforts we couldn’t get the desk to work, meaning that we had wasted two hours of our contributor’s time already without anything even being done. After us getting hold of a fellow audio production student we ended up moving to the multitrack studio instead as we had someone with us who knew how to use it.

Once we were in here and had fixed the initial problems with the sample rate we were fine with the rest of the recording process, with clips being played out via the RadioLogik DJ software. The only issues we did have was that there was a lot of spill between microphones due to the nature of it being a panel show where people sit next to each other, the other issue was level as at times people did not all talk together then at others everyone would start talking meaning that I had to ride the faders which did cause problems as at times I was very slow to react. In hindsight, I also should have told people how to sit with microphones in front of them as Jack and Grace had never been in that type of environment before meaning that there was a lot of popping due to us not telling them how to reduce this.

Overall though the recording was successful it did take longer than we had expected due to us having to move studios and give up on fixing the studio we had intended to use.