Have You Heard The News- The Year In Review

November 8, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Radio 1 commisioning

The Radio 1 commissioning process is largely similar to that of Radio 4’s as we must again follow all the steps to become accredited as a BBC supplier which you find about here.However, in regards to how we would be pitching the idea, it would be vastly different and the final product would be significantly different from our original idea.

COMMISSIONING GUIDELINES

Radio 1 are looking for podcasts rather than that of traditional radio and the commissioning guidelines stress the importance of the finished piece being a podcast, not a radio programme that is turned into a podcast like with some of there pre-existing podcats e.g Greg James’ That what he said or Movies with Ali Plumb. BBC Radio 1 has been lacking a dedicated comedy slot for many years and this is aimed at changing this by making sure that it shows that BBC Radio 1 is ”unruly, infectious, and honest” (BBC,2017). The podcasts are also supposed to be talent lead meaning that in our podcast will revolve mostly around James leading the panel and the discussion as a whole alongside scripted elements that he delivers.

The guidelines also stress the importance of these podcasts being distinctive and being 100% original in regards to the ideas that are put into them and I would argue that our revised programme which you can find out about here is, especially for Radio 1’s audience has not had any political comedy let alone comedy for many years.

Another element that is stressed is that comedy has the potential to converse over areas that young people are interested in i.e politics as shown by young peoples engagement in the election and this means that we believe our idea would be suitable to pitch to radio 1 and politics allow us to fulfil the need being stimulating, exciting and require focused attention, as well as have spontaneity, energy and be provocative. For us, our panel members will also be crucial in whether we hit these goals as we will need people who are spontaneous and are provocative in their way of thinking at the same time as being funny, and i believe that we should potentially abandon the idea of it being clip lead and more conversationalist for these guidelines.

In relation to this is that the tone podcasts should be unguarded conversation be informal spontaneous again this will heavily relate to the way the piece is scripted as well as the contributors that we use with us needing to prioritise someone who can be spontaneous and speak their mind but at the same time be funny.

In terms of how many podcasts there are two options:

The first is a series based podcast which spans 12 episodes and the series needs to build a following for digital listening at the same time as having a strong narrative over 12 episodes, they must also be engaging and risk-taking by either innovation or being provocative alongside being informal and spontaneous.

The second option that we have is to produce a ‘mini-series’ of 2 to 3 episode that are riskier and/or play a role in developing new talent, this type of series lends itself to potentially becoming a longer series.

I believe that due to the nature of project we will be unlikely to fill 30 minutes on each month meaning that a shorter series of potentially six or three episodes would be much more likely for us to produce and allow us to not run out of material at the same time as not making the podcasts become dull and boring for the listener, as it should be engaging. Due to the nature of the audience, it also means that we would need to find political news stories that related to a young audience so that they can relate to what we are talking about.

This ultimately means we would pitch our podcast as a series of 3, due to its nature and the problem of potentially boring the listener if we had too many episodes due to the fact that they do not interrelate with one another. This type of series also lends itself to an extension outwards after we have more experience as

The Process

In terms of how we physically commision this again very similar to that of the process of Radio 4, we are required to submit a 250-word proposal for the first stage and fill out a questionnaire as to why we are an eligible company to work with. Once we have done this we would then be required to submit a full proposal which outlines all the relevant information for the following sections:

1- A detailed proposal responding to the commissioning brief that has been discussed above.

2- A section detailing the following:

The name of the person who would be dealing with the BBC on behalf of the production company.

The location of the production team

Evidence of that team having experience making relevant content

Talks with any relevant third parties that may be needed in order to fulfil the brief.

A strong budget outlining the cost per episode and where funding will come from if other sources are utilised.

Once this is submitted we would then pitch the idea in person to the commissioning team where we discuss and elaborate on the idea and answer any questions that may occur. This would then lead to us either signing a contract or not being offered a contract and if we were unsuccessful in the project we would then be offered feedback.

Assesment Criteria

The BBC will then assess our pitch in relation to three areas, these being: editorial proposal and capability (75%), value for money (20%) and risk (5%). In terms of the editorial proposal and capability, this means the programme must fit the network alongside a strong format that demonstrates innovation. It also outlines what experience a team should have, as they should understand the tone of the podcasts, have a knowledge of youth culture alongside having experience of on-air talent managing, plans for social media and have an appreciation of podcasts and spoken word programming.

We would also be assessed on Value for money meaning we would need to demonstrate a price per episode and have a strong financial plan to back up the project.

Finally, we would be assessed on the risk that it represents, with areas such as the BBC’s reputation, conflict of interests and the project complying with BBC policies.

Ultimately we would need to consider the criteria as to what the BBC commissioners are looking for in what we create and make sure that our project hits these as otherwise, we would never get the opportunity to put the programmes on.

This also allows me to fulfil and gain an understanding of the commissioning process for my learning objective as I now know what the BBC will expect from a finished product that they air and the process that commisioning a show goes through. I have also seen the differences between item to item as has been showing the difference between commisioning an ad hoc programme for Radio 4 that we initially decided upon before changing to create a podcast for Radio 1.

November 7, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Radio 1 Target Audience

Why am I talking about radio 1… (answers here)

Radio 1’s target audience is much easier to define than that of Radio 4 for example, this is because Radio 1 is demographically based meaning that they target young people in the age range between 15-29-year-olds, however what is key is that it should have a distinctive mix of music and speech-based content and be a place for new music (BBC,2016). This means that the treatment we utilise for the programme will be significantly different than say that of our original idea for radio 4 due to the fact that it will have to be a snappier piece with music beds underneath the piece and make use of music throughout the piece. It will also need to be shorter first off all due to the commissioning but also due to the fact that younger audiences will most likely lose interest.

In terms of Radio 1’s audience for Q3 RAJAR results it had 9,697,000 listeners which is a significant amount of listeners (RAJAR 2017). In regards to the makeup of this audience, it is split via the following:

This shows that most of Radio 1’s audience is within its target demographic of 15-24-year-olds being equal to that of 25-34-year-olds. In regards to the number of hours that people consumed it was 6.3 per listener which is not a bad average rate, however, has it declined from 6.7 from the previous quarter of 2017 proving that there is an uphill struggle for Radio 1 (Rajar 2017).

In terms of the gender profile of Radio 1’s listeners, it is roughly equal and has been since 2010. This ultimately means that we need to try and make our panel as gender balanced as possible with two males and two females on either side to make sure that we do not alienate half of audience due to us not having a balanced panel.

Alongside this, it is also important for us to have an understanding of when Radio 1’s listeners tune in and when they don’t even though our programme is going to be podcast based meaning that it will be accessible whenever someone wants. Despite this though the programme will still be being broadcast ‘traditionally’ from 3AM-4AM on weekday

What this shows is first of all the Radio 1’s audience has gotten smaller than it was in the second quarter of 2015, however, it also shows that Radio 1’s audience is not significantly breakfast show based with it being roughly equal until 17:30 where it starts to drop off significantly with overnight show not getting massive listenership. This does also imply a potential positive as it means that our podcast may get listened to instead of Radio’1 mainstream output.

November 7, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Lol Hammond

Lol Hammond is a music supervisor for Vertigo films and a composer for films. In terms of his music supervisor credits, he has worked on films such as Bronson, Its all gone Pete Tong and Monsters.

First of all, he discussed the role of the music supervisor and explained that he was responsible for finding composer(s) for films and negotiating with them alongside sourcing tracks for particular scenes and overseeing the sound design. He also stressed that there is a lot of negotiation between labels, artists and publishers to get to license a track and that to be good at being a music supervisor you need to have good negotiation skills and basic social skills. He also explained the process of how he licenses a track by utilising a mixture of asking people and pitching to people and stressed that going directly to an artist can lead to a piece of music being much cheaper or actually agreeing for it to be used. In terms of industry advice, he said that if you wanted to do anything in film both composition or music supervisor wise you should practice on short films as these are very easily watched by industry professionals, related to this is that you should know your stuff in regards to music and not box yourself into just one grenre of music that you just like as it would impact the potential jobs you may get in the future.

November 4, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Week 6 tutorial with Zara

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.

November 2, 2017Simon Nunn No Comments

Luke Pickering

This week’s guest lecturer was Luke Pickering of the Church Studios in London, Luke also studied Audio production at Lincoln.

Despite Luke being from a different field of audio considering I want to go into radio it was still a valuable talk. What I particularly drew upon was the fact that Luke described the creative industries as a service industry meaning that the work you do is to serve a client not to serve yourself, this means that money always comes first in any project, and this is relevant in any field of the audio industry. Luke also gave some interesting pointers on how to get work experience and what you should do once you get it, with me particularly taking note of him saying that you have to engineer your own luck and that then it is up to you try and make things happen rather than you relying on someone else to do it for you, he also stressed the importance of knowing when is and isn’t the right moment to talk to someone and how to make yourself ‘invisible’. The other thing he talked about was what industry professionals are looking for from someone, which he stated was the following: switched on, strong initiative, not annoying and driven, this was really interesting to hear about as he said it was obvious if someone comes into the studio who hasn’t got these qualities they are simply not invited back. The final thing i took was that you shouldn’t big yourself up on applications as again people can tell if you’re lying about something and are less likely to pick you over someone who is honest.