This week our show was based on New Years Resolutions, although it was based in February, we thought this was a good topic to do because people would start to give up on their resolutions regarding health and fitness and we wanted to inspire people to keep on track. There was a lot of preproduction work for the show, Josh, Elliot, Simon and I made packages between us and we had lots of practice before the live show. I feel that we were so prepared because Elliot was such a good producer.
For this show I took on the role of Broadcast Assistant, which I was really excited to do as I hadn’t been BA since our first live show in Level 1. I think that the show was a success overall, although there were some mistakes that could have been avoided, as at one point my mistake led to Siren playing out nothing for 16 seconds. If this had been any longer the emergency autoplay at the transmitter would have kicked in. We were using the log for playing our packages instead of playing straight from carts. As Ralf’s interview was being played I wanted to check the Chiropractor packages levels so played the Chiropractor package out on Cue. I placed it in the cart, but didn’t realise that would remove what was currently playing, this cut off the interview by about 30 seconds. As soon as I realised what I had done and that we hadn’t been playing anything out live I used talkback to tell the presenters to read the outro. They were understandably very startled, but powered through and read the outro on their cue sheets. Josh and Elliot calmed the presenters down when we played the next package and we apologised on air for the technical difficulties. I had no idea that by playing another track that it would wipe off whatever was playing, and I was paying too much attention to the Chiropractor package to realise we were off air. I am just thankful I realised before the emergency autoplay kicked in.
As we were running a few minutes under towards the end of the show we decided to play our backup song “Eye of the Tiger”. As the presenters were going to introduce the song, Ryan, the Siren FM technician was trying to guide me through putting a Siren FM jingle into the log. I missed the cue from the presenters because of this, and Elliot and Josh quickly told me to play the song. I reacted quickly but still had a few seconds of dead air. This was again because I became distracted when I should have been focusing on the output of the show, which is something that I definitely need to improve on.
The presenters definitely improved throughout the course of the show. To begin with you can see how nervous Chloe and George are, with lots of “ers” and “ums” but they soon begin to become more and more comfortable. I can understand why they were so nervous because we hadn’t had a full run through of the show before. At one point George made quite a funny mistake when Elliot asked him to do a time check, telling the listeners was “47 minutes to 4” instead of 3:47pm. I thought they presented well together but at times it did seem a bit wooden as I know Chloe and George don’t normally talk to each other.
Jakes OB sounded very natural and he was very charismatic in answering his questions. On the day of the show Jake couldn’t stay long due to his Radio Drama auditions which is reasonable. Although Jake organised the interview just a few days before, the OB was incredibly informative and interesting. Jakes outro leading back to the presenters was also really professional.
Elliot was an amazing producer. Although he was slow to notice when I made the mistake during the Ralf interview, he was busy talking to Josh about what was coming up next on the show. He organised everyone well and made sure they were all up to date on their work. When I went to conduct the Chiropractor interview it was Elliot who went out to find a clinic that would actually have an interview with us. During the show Elliot stayed close to me and Josh, and was constantly checking the running order to make sure we were on time. He stayed in touch with the presenters and went into the studio at any point the microphones were not on air ensuring that they were ok and informing them of any changes or tweaks there were to the running order.
Simon took on the online role for our team. During the show he took charge of our Facebook and Twitter to drum up a bigger audience, and also gave tweets for the presenters to read. Simon set up the IPad in the studio for taste test which we live streamed on Facebook.
Package
The package I created was based on Chiropractors and the health benefits of getting the procedure done. The interview was my idea to do as it provided an alternative health method, however it was the producer Elliot who organised the interview. I feel the package could have been improved adding another element. Our original idea was to get myself to have some treatments done, but we found once we were inside that this would not be possible as I would have needed a referral to get anything done. Instead we conducted an interview with the main chiropractor which I feel became a bit monotonous, but did fit in and was relevant with the rest of the programme.
Social Media
We kept our social media active before and throughout the show, also livestreaming the taste test between diet and normal soft drinks. We decided to only livestream the taste test and not the whole show as it was the most interesting part of the show that could be filmed live. Another reason is so that those who were interested in the rest of the show can tune in to Siren FM.
The livestream can be seen at the link below:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/sauceonsiren/posts/?ref=page_internal
The presenting duo of @Pinkgirlchloe and George. pic.twitter.com/hCKEYzc4lx
— Sauce on Siren (@sauceonsiren) February 1, 2017
We're live on our Facebook page testing the difference between full fat and low fat. Can you tell the difference get in touch now!
— Sauce on Siren (@sauceonsiren) February 1, 2017
Production Paperwork
Running Order
Cue Sheets
Live Interview Questions
Questions-for-Ben-Hodgkins (1)
Compliance Form
Music Reporting Form
Personal Release Form
Radio-Personal-Release-Form (2)
Feedback Sheet
My Feedback Sheet
Reflection
I feel that from this show I have become a lot more confident with the technical side of radio, as I usually prefer presenting. I made enough mistakes to learn from and now I feel a lot more confident when it comes to these types of situations. Throughout this year I have improved in my confidence overall and my leadership and teamwork skills. Having to work with a group of new people every week almost throws you in the deep end, which really helped me improve on my networking skills.
Over the process of the live shows I have found that those who prepare more have a more successful show, which I think can definitely be seen in this show, and this was down to Elliot’s success as a presenter. The show ran much more smoothly compared to other shows because we had prepared thoroughly and had practice before going into the studio.
In addition I have also found that social media drastically helps the programme, especially hyping up the programme throughout the week to gain listener interest. Some shows proved to have a stronger social media presence than others, and Simon worked hard in this show to make the social media strong, including updates before and after the show as well as live streams. I think it is more important to do a short livestream on a segment of the show rather than streaming the whole show because it lures the audience in as a short livestream only gives a taste of the programme. If the whole programme was streamed live, which a few of the shows early on in the year were, the majority of viewers will listen in purely on Facebook, and won’t visit the Siren website.