Category: Production Process

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*

This week started quite well in regards to us having made significant contact with potential contributors with James having put an advert out on Mandy actors about potential contributors. We did receive quite a few responses however and after we had shifted through we decided to approach two people from this. One called Charlie was experienced in doing a comedy programme called news revue which is a live comedy programme with sketches etc. The other potential contributor was Will who is a more local standup comedian/actor. James contacted both and arranged phone conversations with them. Unfortunately, i wasn’t able to be at the one that he had with Charlie but judging from what he said she was interested and also gave us pointers on how we should conduct ourselves generally as we hadn’t set a date for recording etc.  I was however able to come and speak to Will, who over the phone seemed like he had the right interests and knew what he was talking about in terms of satirical comedy etc. The one problem that did become apparent was that we weren’t going to be able to book both Charlie and Will at the same time meaning one of them would have to be cut, and it was decided that out of preference we would have Charlie due to her experience.

I had also been in regular contact with Alex Rhodes from BBC Lincolnshire and he wanted clarification over what the project was and how we intended to do it, with who was also on the panel. However after trying to book Alex and dealing with requests one problem that has become apparent is that he may be working the day that we wanted to record which me and James had both set after Charlie’s advice and telling us that we need to do so. This ultimately leads us to be in an awkward situation with only a panel of three people and if Alex can’t do it we will need to find another journalistic type of person who would be willing to be involved.

We also had our weekly tutorial with Zara this week who is now our regular tutor after Dylan going off ill, meaning that a lot of ideas were discussed. The first thing that was discussed was our learning objectives,  Zara said that we were not being specific enough with them and needed to go into more depth around the likes of target audience etc and state why we’re doing the project i.e Portfolio piece etc. The other thing was discussed was why we’re putting it on Radio 4 and whether our cast at the time really suited the station or whether they suited radio 1 to a higher degree, the other advantage of doing this for Radio 1 was that it would mean our duration would be reduced down to 30 minutes instead of having to fill a whole hour, related to this was the problem of James fitting a radio 4 presenter style as this was very unlikely. Finally, we discussed who we should be talking to as Zara suggested that we spoke to a list of people from both Radio 4 commissioning and presenting to give us advice from our script to helping us with what they are looking for in a comedy piece.

This week we again met with Dylan to discuss any progress that had been made on the project. Unfortunately this week I hadn’t personally done that much in regards to the project whereas James had done a lot more in the sourcing of the content and was near to completing this.  The one thing that I had done was starting to make contact with potential people who would be interested such as those in the comedy society seeing as they do there own radio show on siren and would be the right type of people to approach(https://lincolnsu.com/activities/comedy). I did also have a brief thought about those who I work with and if any of these journalists would be at all interested in being involved.

Within the tutorial one point that was made was that we needed to expand ourselves outwards in terms of ages as if we were to only be using students then we would most likely never get it commissioned for radio 4 due to radio 4 not basing its commissions around demographics to the extent that radio 1 does. This then lead us to think about how  anyone who would be interested that was in an ‘older generation’ than say what we were and at the same time stop everyone who was on the programme being a white man to ensure the programme fitted within the BBC’s diversity rules.

Another thing was discussed was the budget and how we go about doing this as I couldn’t understand the principle of how this worked, after some discussion I understood that the budget was just for this one project and what we were supposed to list in this budget and to what level of detail we were supposed to go into.

This week we again met with Dylan to discuss how the process had been developed, this meant explaining that we had decided how we wanted to break down the roles of research for and why we decided to do this, for example, James doing the content due to him being the one that will write the script, whereas I am acting as a producer meaning that I will be the one who will do more of the research rather than the writing.  We also discussed the problems that we had encountered within the week such as who we were supposed to be aiming  the programme at, this is because we had struggled with the idea of creating a programme aimed at an audience for Radio 4 and then creating this and airing it on Siren radio, so we were told to focus on putting the programme on Radio 4.  The other area that was quite heavily discussed was contributors and how many people we wanted and who we wanted, it was decided that we need a panel of 5 people and within this we need at least one type of journalist, and the other 3 comedians, with James acting as a mediator/host.

This concluded our second tutorial.