December 13, 2017 – Have You Heard The News- The Year In Review

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.

December 13, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Radio 1’s last comedy output

Radio 1 last outputted their own comedy in 2014 through a programme called Phil & Alice’s comedy lounge which aired last aired in 2014, it was a section of the show titled Phil Taggart and Alice Levine which was predominantly focused on new music and filled the infamous ‘Peel slot, this means that comedy already felt out of place on the programme. The comedy itself was standup based on standup with the comedians taking to a stage in front of an audience and this then being recorded and subsequently broadcast, the variety that this had was huge though with their being different styles of comedians and different topics being discussed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01mqsdp

Before this, it would be fair to count Chris Moyle’s breakfast show as something that was funny and in a sense comedy due to the spontaneity of Moyles and the large team that worked with him and featured within the programme be it from Comedy Dave to the producer Aled. The reason that this was funny because of the characters and the way that Moyles would do very random items such as the games he played or the interviews he did. This last aired in 2012 and he was replaced with Nick Grimshaw.

The original dawn of comedy on Radio 1 was considered to be Jack Jackson who utilised tape recordings and comedy clips between records and used tape editing to experiment and he said to be the start of Radio 1’s relationship with comedy

Kenny Evertt is a seen as a man of pure talent, as he was a pioneer of Radio 1’s output and the comedy output particularly, he was on air from BBC Radio from 1968-1972, his show was music based and he played relatively new music but the links between these is what he is known for with these being exceptionally funny and entirely random. The shows contained pre recorded elements, clips and alot of sarcastic comedy that relates to our own project, the things that he talked about were also very relatable to the listener.

The Marry White House Experience

This was a satire based programme that used music and clips to create comedy, with it mostly being one liners that segued into music to create the joke. This was all done in a front of a live studio audience. It also involved live sketches that would mock politicians or current affairs, however these would be a starting point and often expand outwards in to topics that did not directly relate. The Marry Whitehouse Experiment was probably the most similar thing that radio 1 aired . It utilised comedy double acts to front the programme and was heavily structured in its delivery and format. But it was ultimately funny and at the time considered to be relatively risky due to the style of comedy and its delivery (Worthington, 2012).

Armando Lannuci

This programme is similar to that of what we hear currently on radio 1 with it being fast paced and spontaneous. It had features such as the Shy Sessions with bands that wouldn’t get played elsewhere do a session with a microphone placed down the corridor, it also was heavily ‘news’ themed with items such as ‘The Height of Buildings’ and information about a song be said over it when it was being placed. It also featured mock guests that didn’t know what they were doing and were entirely false, there were also political satire elements to the programme with this occasionally featuring (Worthington, 2012).

Chris Morris,

He produced programmes such as the Chris Morris Music hour, this was again random and off the bar including things such as prank calls, random guests that are faked to create humorous interviews. This again is more commonplace nowadays and it would be fair to say that it is similar to Chris Moyle’s breakfast show due to the sketches and the sheer randomness (Worthington, 2012)