Simon Nunn – Page 4 – Have You Heard The News- The Year In Review

November 15, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Budget

Budget

It is vital that if we were doing this project for real that we create a budget for the series of programmes or for one-off programmes, in our case this will be for the ‘mini-series’ of 3 podcasts that we are creating for BBC Radio 1.

We intend to receive £4500 in income for the ‘mini-series’ as it will be based on 3 episodes each being billed at £1500 to BBC Radio 1 as stated within their commissioning guidelines (BBC,2017). This, unfortunately, will not cover all of our initial startup costs meaning we will not be making profit of this first ‘mini-series’, despite this in the real world we would be producing other content to allow us to bring in a more substantial income and there is the possibility included in the commisioning document of expanding a ‘mini-series’ such as what we are producing into a fully fledged series of 12 podcasts.

In terms of expenditure, this will be the following:

Studio hire- This is charged at £130 per hour with a roundtable based studio set up for us to record the panel, each podcast would require 1-2 hours of recording meaning each podcast would cost £260, and when this is multiplied by three it equates to £780. (Sound company,2017)

Equipment- We will be buying two laptops to allow us to edit, write scripts, research etc, without any sort of laptop we would be unable to do anything in regards to producing content. The cost of two Mac Book pros with decent specifications costs £1,449 per one meaning a net figure of £2,900.

Software- In terms of software, we will be needing Adobe Creative cloud which allows to get a wide variety of software as we will be required to produce short-form videos alongside pictures and gifs for social media channels which can all be done through creative cloud, which will cost us £720 per year. In terms of the digital audio workstation that we use it will be Logic, this is because it is significantly cheaper than others such as Cubase and Pro-Tools due to Logic not being subscription based and relatively cheap at its one-off purchase cost of £199.

Contributor fees- It would be very unlikely that people would do the podcast if they weren’t going to be paid for their time, meaning we will offer a flat rate of fees per person at £150 per person meaning that with an episode of 3 people it would cost £450 meaning a series would cost £1,350. However, the issue with this is that if someone was promoting something then we may not have to pay them as we are allowing them to promote their new book etc on our podcast. This means that we could potentially get a lower figure if we do not have to pay contributors.

Office- We have chosen to be based in central London as this means that we will have access to a huge talent pool that may be willing to be involved in the podcast and that the majority of the BBC Radio networks are based in London means that if we were to win other commissions then the production of these would be easier and we could attend meetings a lot more easily. However, this does not cheap with the office being £350 a month, meaning £4,200 a year.

November 14, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Learning Outcome- Confidence

I did some research on how to improve my confidence in approaching people to be involved in the project. The first article I read was from Poynter which suggested 5 ways in which you can improve your confidence and be less shy/embarrassed in how you approach people, despite being based for a journalist there was still a lot of things to consider.

The first thing was that I have a professional responsibility to talk to people and ask people if want to be involved within the project due to it being vital for the success of the project as a whole and if I were in a professional environment it would be vital as the project wouldn’t be completed and we wouldn’t gain an income. The next point was that the job role should be the encouragement to make you speak to people as this should act as the motivation. The next thing I learned from this article was that it is vital to have clear-cut research around the person you are going to ask to be involved alongside having dates and times that you would like the potential contributor to be free on so that they can be involved. The final two things that I took from this article was that it is very important for me to stop worrying about the potential outcome of an email/telephone response and just do it and I can relate to this one with particular effect as i’m guilty of doing this. Finally, the notion that practice makes perfect is referenced as the more time you ring or email people the less stigma you have about talking to people.

https://www.poynter.org/news/5-ways-journalists-can-overcome-shyness-during-interviews

The next article I read was from the website Matador network which gave me the following pointers: The first is that you shouldn’t deliberate asking people and you should just do it as the more you ask people, the easier it becomes to do. The second thing was that you shouldn’t apologise for ringing people or emailing people to ask them as you shouldn’t be ashamed of what you’re doing. The penultimate thing is that you should have courage in asking people to be involved as eventually some people will say less to being involved in the programme idea that you have. Finally it is vital that you know what you want from the person and don’t lie to them about what you want them to do and why you are asking them to be involved.

How to approach strangers for interviews

Ultimately it is vital that i conquer this lack of confidence to both be successful in the project and in the general environment of where I want to work as i will be required to speak to people and ask questions alongside asking them if they would like to talk about themselves and if i can’t do this then i will be unlikely to break into my chosen career let alone keep a job.

November 14, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Social Media usage

As one of my learning objectives revolves around getting a better understanding of how social media works as it is vital that I understand how effective social media is created.

In regards to Radio 1’s social media output, this spans Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with each of them having a different way of being approached and vastly different content on each platform. For example with Radio 1’s Facebook page, it heavily utilises video content which has varying places it has come from, for example, some clips from a BBC Music tv programme or small extracts from programmes that have been commissioned for BBC Radio 1’s Iplayer channel, or things that have been filmed in Radio 1’s own studios. This shows that Radio 1 in terms of its Facebook output utilises a heavy amount of video content rather than static pictures to keep the viewer engaged. It is also worth noting that the video clips do not normally exceed 1 minute in length so that that viewer stays engaged to the content rather than switching off halfway through due to it becoming boring.

BBC Radio 1 (2017) BBC Radio 1 Facebook [Facebook] 31st October- 5th November. Available from: https://www.facebook.com/bbcradio1/ [acessed 6th November 2017].

The next social media site is Twitter again this is used very differently to that of the others. Twitter does use video to an extent but this is not to the same level that the Facebook page uses however the length is still under a minute and there is often cross-promotion of videos as some videos that appear on Facebook may also be on Twitter. The differences are though that Twitter uses more links to other content such as BBC blogs or full online content such as Live Lounges etc. The other thing that Twitter is used for more heavily is the usage of gifs that have come from relevant content such as music videos or interviews to make people laugh or interact with the content more. Finally, the advantage of the Twitter is that is that it is a lot easier to cross-promote content as Radio 1 can subsequently retweet things such as one of their presenters tweeting about the show or an artists tweet about them being on a show.

BBC Radio 1 (2017) BBC Radio 1 Twitter [Twitter]. Nov 4th- Nov 6th. Available from: https://twitter.com/BBCR1 [acessed 6th Nov 2017].

The next site that is worth mentioning is Instagram. Instagram is utilised mostly for short-form video content that goes in tandem with radio 1’s actual radio output, meaning that these clips directly promote the show rather than say another BBC programme or service. Alongside this are the photos that are put up on Instagram, these are not just photos of everyday things in the studio but more focused around events, e,.g when I looked there were photos from the Radio 1 rocks event alongside photos of presenters with guests etc to encourage people to listen.

BBC Radio 1 (2015) BBC Radio 1 Instagram [images]. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/bbcradio1/?hl=en [acessed 6th November 2017].

Ultimately what I need to grasp is that all the social media platforms have different roles but all of them should be utilised. This means that for our programme we would potentially create a 40-second video of the funniest bits to try and encourage the listener to tune in which would go on all 3 social media sites, to support this we could then take some photos of the recording session to place on Instagram to build a social media presence for our programme and get people to listen to the programme which is ultimately what you want to happen.

Gaining an understanding of how social media is used in Radio 1’s current output also allows me to fulfil my learning objective which is based on social media and learning how it is used in its current context to produce a multi-media presence for radio which is now more important than ever as has been demonstrated above and the frequency of the content that is outputted.

November 9, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Week 7 tutorial

This week with Zara we discussed what we had been doing in the previous week and told her what we had decided, the most noticeable one of these was that we had changed our project idea again due to the idea being consistently redeveloped, this time we were set upon creating the project for the radio 1 podcast commisioning opportunity that had just become available. We also discussed whether our learning objectives had been impacted heavily by us changing our target audience and in reality, they had not. Once this had been discussed Zara told us that we should be actively contacting people in both the script side of the project and those on the side of commisioning to allow us to gain first-hand research and at the same time develop our industry links which is important for my learning outcome about my portfolio piece as if I can get connections that would listen to it already this would be beneficial. Zara also set us some objectives to get done for the end of the next week, as we had to have contacted people and tried to find the final contributor for the project who was a female to make sure that we have a gender-balanced panel, rather than it being dominated by males which should be avoided at all costs.

November 9, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

A change of idea

The Change

After two tutorials with Zara it was decided that we would change our idea again to make it more achievable and at the same time make it more relevant, this means that our idea will now target BBC Radio 1’s new podcast series that focus on comedy and are half an hour in length, rather than an hour programme for Radio 4. Ultimately this is because me and James both are young so it means that we would be able to relate more to what young people are thinking about rather than that of people in the older generations. One of the other reasons was that it is also much easier for us to source a panel that is relevant to young people as we know these type of people and when we tried to source contributors for our original idea the majority of these were young enough to be in Radio 1’s demographic. Furthermore with radio 1 launching a new podcast series in January 2018 and the commisioning guidelines being released in October it makes perfect sense for us to attempt this as from my point of view it makes significantly more sense to try and fulfil and actual commission rather than say doing an ad hoc commission which is what we had originally intended. This Radio 1 commision also makes the medium become more multiplatform based as we are now producing a podcast rather than a traditional radio show, this also allows us to be more creative with how we use social media, as we would need to be very active and forward thinking in terms of radio 1 whereas for radio 4 we would have been a slower pace and less of innovative.

Overall Learning Objectives

In regards to how this affects the overall learning objectives, they will be impacted modestly as we will just adapt it to the network that we are targeting which was origninally radio 4, but this has now been revised for Radio 1, the outlined length will also change due to the podcasts only having to be 30 minutes per episode rather than an hour programme. In regards to the other learning objectives, they will not need to change as we can still have a five-person panel that is interesting and varied in their opinion, we will still attempt to achieve a balanced programme that fulfils the BBC guidelines alongside making sure the programme is entertaining to the majority of the audience and make sure that they can relate to it. finally creating strong supporting content now becomes significantly more important due to Radio 1 outputting a lot more content via social media channels

Personal Learning Objectives

In terms of my personal learning objectives, they will stay the same as I will still be improving my project management skills and gaining the confidence to find contributors and talking to them. In terms of developing a better knowledge of pitching to BBC networks, this will be improved as I will have looked at both Radio 4’s commisioning process and Radio 1’s and learnt how these differ from one another and the justification still remains the same with independent companies being vital to the BBC. In terms of being experimental, this will also be more achievable as the commissioning document stresses the importance of being innovative and 100% new, making this again more achievable than it was originally. The learning objective regarding social media is now more important than ever as we can be experimental with this and it is much easier to implement due to Radio 1 being social media heavy. Finally having a strong portfolio piece is the same, however, it will most likely be more relevant due to me most likely applying for the Radio 1 internship after university.

*how does it affect plo’s*