Week 1

This week we decided on what our pop up station would be based around, with the overall class decision being a gaming station. The stations that we chose between were very varied, with me choosing to pitch for the ‘Women’s Rights’ station, but it was deemed not women focused enough, which I can see now.

Although initially I was concerned about a gaming station as I know absolutely nothing about it, we had a class discussion about everything that can be involved in it such as discussion topics, the different music that gaming covers and the different types of shows that we can create. Knowing about this and seeing everyone elses’ enthusiasm for the station makes me feel better about doing something I don’t know and I feel that it will be a good and fun challenge for us to end on.

The structure of the station has also been decided, consisting of three one hour long shows. The first one being a music show, including all genres that the games cover and the different stations within the games. As the genres are so diverse and broad, a show solely dedicated to the music was absolutely necessary. The second show is a speech/discussion show, which will cover more taboo topics in gaming culture, such as women in gaming and violence, which will cover the half an hour requirement of speech content for the module. Finally, we are having a magazine style show called the Retro Show about games that we used to love and the different elements of the future of gaming. All of which I feel will be good shows for the station.

We also decided on a competition, which we are hoping to be for listeners to win tickets to a gaming convention in Birmingham called Insomnia, which is happening the weekend of our final show, so it can run for the four weeks of the station.

The roles that we will all have are also now finalised, with the big roles being pitched for my the people who wanted to do them such as Station manager. Originally, I planned to do something with social media as that’s what I have the most experience with as I am a Social Media intern at a radio station and have been for the past 6 months. I also applied to be the assistant producer for the music show, as knowing that it contains a lot of different genres would be really interesting for me and would expend my knowledge of something I already love. When it came down to it, I ended up with being Assistant Producer for the Music show as it was expressed that the use of  classical music would be included, and as I am a classical musician, I felt that my knowledge on the subject would be really helpful for the show. However, as there aren’t enough people to be assistant producers for the other shows, I am now the assistant producers for all the show, which I am alright with, as long as all the producers know that I can’t be three places at once. So my teams are: Music Show – Callum and Mark; Speech Show – Phoebe, Fay and Tony; Retro Show – Abbi and Natalie.

Week 2

This week we have started planning the shows and finalised our stations name which is “Unlocked”. We made the decision to not have radio in the name as radio is now a digital platform as well so it needs to be included as a brand rather than just radio. However, what did happen was that there was a change around in roles which I’m not too happy  about as it involved me basically not being on the Music show which is what I wanted to be on and now being assistant producer for just the speech show, which I originally said I would do out of kindness as there was no one else to help. Unfortunately, it appeared that I didn’t have a say in it so I  don’t really have much of a choice so I’m just having to do it, even though I have no knowledge on it. I know it will be interesting, but it’s just frustrating as it isn’t what I had planned to do.

Speech Show: This week the producer, Phoebe, and I sat down and had a group meeting with everyone and we decide on a name which is now called ‘State of Play’, which we feel works really well with the idea of the show as it’s making you think in different states of mind about gaming as a whole. We also looked over a basic idea for what the shows would cover over each week. We went back and forth with these quite a lot and deciding the order of them was tricky as we didn’t want it to not flow well from one show to the next. We knew from the beginning that a show on Virtual Reality would be last as it would be fun and light-hearted. Also we decided this as for the OB we would like to go to the first VR escape room in London and have the OB team take part in that, as it would run over the course of the show, which would be such good interaction for the listener and would make for really good pieces of visualisation, social media, and website content. Finally, we decided on Gaming Culture for Week 1 and the Pilot show, Women in Gaming for Week 2, Gaming Addiction and In-App Purchases for Week 3, and a VR Special for Week 4. I also made a basic clock for the shows to follow which can be found on the Google Drive in the State of Play folder, although we are aware that this will probably slightly alter week by week, but will definitely be completely different for the final week. Another thought that I had was to add a helpline page to the website that the show can refer the listeners to, as some of our topics will cover some sensitive issues, such as addiction, gambling, online bullying and harassment, and we do not want the audience to suffer in silence so the links can be there just as a stand by as we do not want to promote anything negative, just highlight the issues.

Music Show: Although my main role is now AP for the speech show, I am still playing a small part in the music show. Another change that has happened, is that Ellie is now the Producer of the show and no longer Mark, so first thing we did was inform Ellie of Callum, Mark and my previous ideas that we had. We confirmed the name ‘Press Play’ which fits in with the rest of the station, and decided that we wanted the show to have a more commercial sound, such as Capital or Kiss. We also decided on 2 features, the first being Rage Quit, where every week we play out either YouTube clips or listeners clips of them rage quitting a game, which is a bit of light-hearted fun. This would be played out over the Wii theme music, to contradict the audio being played out and also because it is now more of a meme as well, so the audience would understand why it would be funny. The second feature is Grand Theft Audio, which would happen at the end of the show, but we would create a Twitter poll with 3/4 songs from one of the radio stations in the game and get the listeners to vote which one they’d want to hear at the end of the show, so making for good social media interaction, and then we would also play the hooks for the tracks that didn’t get the majority votes. Also, I drew a rough clock which Ellie then made more professional and you can find that in the Google Drive under Press Play as well.

Week 3

This week it seems that I have been entirely removed from Press Play (the music show) as there isn’t enough for me to do, so now it appears that I am solely doing the speech show. This week I sat down again with Phoebe and started planning the pilot show, as next week we would like to have a run through of the first half an hour to test if we can have smooth links and to get to grips with the outside broadcast equipment. We decided that where it was deemed appropriate we would add a package to add extra content. So for example, in the first week we will be making a package on Fay’s brother, whose parents have put him on a ‘playstation detox’ for his use of constant bad language and we will be speaking to him, his parents and his girlfriend to see how they all feel about it. But this would not be appropriate for all the topics as some of them do need to be fairly heavy. What we do have as well is the news team who are doing an investigative journalism piece on each show about the topic, which is called ‘Update’.

Phoebe and myself sat down this week and brainstormed ideas for all the shows in order to decide what topics we would need to cover. This was really useful as it meant we could talk to the OB team and the news team to see what they wanted to cover and how they would angle it, so that it would fit in nicely with the shows and so that we weren’t just doubling up on content.

I also started doing some research for a package for week 2 on incels, which are male gamers who hate female gamers and trying to find reasons why. I stumbled across a study which was really helpful that showed reasons why men don’t like playing women in games as it is mainly to do with the fact that they tend to see female characters as more of a romantic or sexual opportunity than an opponent.

I also devised the first running order for the pilot show/week 1, which has been sectioned into 3-10 minute slots detailing what the presenters will be speaking about in each section, with extra research to be added, although I am keen for the presenters to do research on the topics themselves as I’m worried that if they are just reading off the running order, it will sound too scripted and not passionate enough. I am also starting to make different clocks for each week depending on what is happening in the show.

When it comes to research, Phoebe and I decided that we will try to make more content point than needed as we’d much rather have too much and have to cut some than not enough and have to resort to using music instead. Although using music wouldn’t be a negative point, as the topics can be quite sensitive, the music would have to be carefully picked out before hand as to fit in with the themes of the show, which is something that will need to be sorted within the next week or so.

Week 4

During the session this week, Phoebe and I sat down just the two of us and fully went through all of the running orders for the show with every few minutes being marked out. We have now come to realise that this show is actually massive and possibly too much for two people who don’t have much knowledge about gaming to take on, but we’re giving it our best shot!

First of all we had a meeting with our station manager and she suggested that we put some songs in the show to break it up, which is something that I did suggest in the first week, but the rest of team didn’t think it was necessary. We have decided that we will have these songs to break up the content of the show as although it is different voices throughout, it is still a lot for the listener to take in and they need a break from the information that they are being given. So the way that the songs will fit in is they will link to something that the presenters have just been talking about or will be talking about as a nice link into the next subject of conversation. For example, in the second week programme on Women in Gaming, we will play a song from the Tomb Raider soundtrack and then go on to talk about the sexualisation of female characters such as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. The only time that this will differ is if there is a song before the news, as it will be a generic A List song as it will lead nicely into the music show for them to back announce out of and introduce the beginning of their show.

I have also decided that I need to take a step back from the Update (journalistic news section) and the OB, as they are totally separate things, and Phoebe and I have enough on our plate to plan. Obviously we all need to work together as a team, which we still will do, but we need them to tell us what angle they will be taking every week so we can plan our show as technically they are being marked on how they find locations etc and we are not. Saying that, it is becoming a bit last minute with the OB as they are struggling with finding locations so we are having to constantly change clocks, running orders etc to compensate for what they are doing which is making this more stressful.

However, as I said we have made a skeleton running order for every show as we can then adjust accordingly. This was done as we had so much content that we could talk about for each show, that we needed to sit down, research and decide what should go in and what we would have to leave, also bearing in mind that we now needed to add in music to the clock so time is tight and every show is rammed with content, but we all agreed that we’d rather have too much content that we’d have to cut than not enough and have to replace with music.

Today, we had a run through of the first show/pilot week to test out the timings and the content. We also asked the presenters to do some research of their own into the show topic as although we had done some and put it on the shared drive but if they were purely to read off of our research it would sound too scripted and not a natural show. We also wanted the presenters to have their own opinions on the topic, but have facts and be knowledgable enough to back it up. The run through was good and we found that we were able to fill the time with the presenters, but we are concerned that one of our presenters isn’t doing enough research and we don’t want it to sound like one is leading the other, as we would like it to be an equal discussion of opinions and speaking. The show did sound good, but it is something that we need to work on. What the run through did show though was that some of the timings need to be swapped around, as sometimes they still had things to talk about when we needed to break or we had planned for a different topic, so I am now going to redo the show plans and the clocks for this.

Week 5

This week we had our pilot show. It’s fair to say that it didn’t go brilliantly, with us realising that we need a lot more planning.

A lot of things went wrong in this show. We didn’t know that the OB was going to happen until the Sunday beforehand when the team told us that 10 minutes was too long even though the clocks saying the time had been up for well over a week, and we didn’t get the news package until 45 minutes before we went live when we had asked for it by Friday, so it wasn’t a good start really. Also, the playout system crashed 4 minutes before we went live which massively threw the presenters off. So we have made a lot of changes after having a de brief with the team straight after the show. What’s frustrating is that the rest of the station can make great ideas for us, but have no idea how much work has to go into the show with only 2/3 of us trying to create the whole thing, and when we are having meetings it’s almost too late for them to be giving suggestions when we had been planning the show for a week. However, we do recognise that we need to restructure the show. We have made a whole new show plan and have put more thought into what content will be in the show, and have made sure that everything flows into each section, as we know our topics are good and strong. We are meeting and having run throughs every day this week to make sure that we can get this completely right, but I’m starting to feel that they gave this show to the wrong team as no one knows enough knowledge even though we are researching constantly, but no one has any knowledge even slightly.

We spent everyday as a group together trying to replan this show, by organising more pre-recorded content e.g. making packages, two pre-recorded phone interviews, clips of game play for parts of the show to inform the audience, clips from speeches to back up what the presenters are saying, to making sure that our song choices were perfect, so we ended up going for two classical instrumental pieces and  then Nat King Cole – Orange Coloured Sky to end it as it would put a more uplifting spin on it and would segway nicely into Natalie’s show, Play Again. It was a very tough week for myself and the other producer Phoebe as from the Thursday to the Monday I went with 13 hours sleep as there was too much work to be getting done. The running order which I am responsible for changes every five minutes, we weren’t getting audio until the day of the show and it was all very tricky. Also, it was suggested that I drive the desk which is fine if I had enough time to learn it and am confident enough in it as I haven’t been taught how to use it at all, but it came to the Monday morning and I was told I was going to be shown how to do it, which considering how much other stuff has to be done for this show was not fine with me. I ended up not driving it as I think everyone could see how much of a breakdown I was about to have.

Week 6

This week was Unlocked’s first official live broadcast with the talk show kicking off the station. Before hand was a bit of a disaster as our initial run through didn’t go well, and with the pressure on from last week, everyone was feeling really nervous about it as we know it’s our show that’s bringing everyone down. Also the feedback we got last week in front of everyone really didn’t help the morale for the show team. We also didn’t get our final piece of audio until 11am again which just makes it more and more tricky as we can’t even do a full run through as we don’t have everything we need to do this with. We also had trouble with the OB as there was an internet issue which we couldn’t resolve for a while which caused more issues and stress. When the show went out I sat in a separate room to listen to it as an actual listener would and give feedback on how it sounded which worked really well. We also had a live caller on which sounded super great as well and added the talk show element that we were missing. The show as a whole went a lot better than expected, with the presenters sounding a lot more confident in the research and the facts meaning that it sounded more natural. However our feedback was just negative after negative which once again brought the whole mood down. Our feedback always seems to be quite contradictory which is confusing. For example, we originally weren’t going to use tracks in our show, but we were told to use instrumentals to take some of the pressure off the presenters, so we made sure to pick a couple of 3/4 minute pieces to put before the adverts, but part of our feedback was that we shouldn’t be using the tracks like that? We are all a bit confused about it but we will try and implement as much as possible into next week. We also invited Lucy and Eliza to come in on our meetings, but no one turned up.

Monday night, the whole team took the evening off especially seeing as myself and Phoebe had had under 15 hours sleep the whole weekend doing work for this and I had been under so much pressure in the morning of the show that it had made me physically sick. However Monday evening we did record an interview for the following show straight after as it needed to be done and we were by the studios anyway.

Tuesday the four of us came in for a 9-5 day to start the planning of the next show, which was to do with women in gaming. We immediately started to implement the first part of the feedback by giving more of a reason for the show going live which was that it was the premier of the new Tomb Radar which has a female lead in it, so this is what we based the show around. I immediately started to pull together a first running order, whilst the rest of the team started getting into research straight away. We also started to contact experts in the field who might be able to help us with interviews etc, as making sure that we incorporated live elements was part of our feedback. The initial running order, which you’ll find on the drive in State of Play, Week 2, Clocks and Running Orders, has the initial timings on it, but also our calls to action for social media as I thought of the very simple question which Tony and Fay can keep asking the audience to get a response which was “What’s your favourite female videogame character?” as it’s related to the show, but also has a nice more light-hearted element to the show and can lead to further discussion. We also decided that the following morning, Tony and Fay would head into central London and conduct a voxpop in order to see how many female protagonists the public can name in order to shed light on the idea that there’s not very many. I also made a first clock for the show, so that we all had a basic idea of what to run off of. We also decided that we would split the OB into 2 this time so that Simon could integrate more within the topics that the show was speaking about, so it would be three minutes in the first section, and eight in the second with a minute of chat between Simon, the OB guest, and Tony and Fay to make the whole show more integrated and flow better.

Wednesday, Phoebe and myself came into university whilst Tony and Fay went into central to make the voxpop. We were looking at more research as that is what mainly needed to be done. At this point, we’d realised that doing all this on our own was making our other work (mainly our dissertations as hardly anyone in our group had got anywhere as this takes up every hour of our day) fall behind, so I sent out a message to some members of the group who don’t have much else to do until the day, such as the news team and branding and called on them for help with research. I set up a blank document in each weeks folder on the drive called “RESEARCH” and asked them all to find some things out, post the links to the articles and the main points that we needed to know, as we just can’t do all of it as a talk show team is usually a lot bigger than four people. Unfortunately, this didn’t work and only two people ended up helping us out which is really annoying as everyone knows that we need the help, and the research into this show is what makes it great. Wednesday afternoon we did another pre-recorded interview ready for the show with a female gamer called Michelle, who had a more positive experience as a gamer for over 20 years which was such a good interview. Phoebe and myself then started editing interviews and voxpops. Our final piece of pre-recorded content for this week was a package that we asked Tony to do that was a brief history of Women in Gaming as we wanted to be able to highlight the main female protagonists throughout gaming history to show the audience how little there actually were. On the Wednesday Tony started that. Finally on the Wednesday we chose the music that we wanted to be in the show, as we have two instrumental pieces (shorter than the last time) and one more fun piece. As we were ending with women getting into the gaming industry, we chose the song Gold by Spandau Ballet as also it’s nice and uplifting and would flow well into the next show. This meant the running order and clock had to change so I continued to do that. Calum also attempted to teach me how to use the desk using the log from the week before in the afternoon.

Thursday we came in again and I had a meeting with our tutor to discuss time management for other subjects as this takes up all of my time and we agreed that for our group, Tuesday afternoons is our Dissertation time and that we need more people to get involved with helping this show. However, afterwards we continued to do more research for the show and started to finalise in and out words for pre-recorded content, which we needed altogether by Friday. In our show, the news team do a journalistic segment called Update, but we were informed by Clare who was making it that due to illness from her interviewee we wouldn’t have that audio until Saturday morning, which was still fine as she still knew how long it needed to be and she knew what the in and out words were which is what we really needed. We had to have a group chat today regarding the incels segment of the show, as it is very negative and can end up off topic drastically, but we wanted Tony and Fay to have their opinion on it as part of our feedback was to have more of it, so we left it completely unscripted for them to decide between themselves. I then had to go to work.

Friday morning, I finished editing the voxpop after they had little success in central London so Tony came back to do some around Harrow and university but they sounded awful and they were bad answers so I needed to wait for it to be redone which he did with grace and accepted that the first weren’t good enough (but had to wait for Fay to re-record the questions as the audio kept popping when they were recording them in public) but it all sounded fine and went up on the drive. When editing I decided to put some music from Pokemon underneath it to keep the gaming theme going and as we decided against using beds throughout the show as when we’d listened to the talk radio advised no beds were used (and no music for that matter) we decided to just keep it to pre-recorded items. Phoebe and myself then sat and organised live callers and where they should fit into the show as we desperately needed them. We ended up with three callers, one for each section which worked really well, for about 2 minutes each, which meant that it gave them time to respond to what we were talking about previously, as a talk show would do. However, it did mean that we had to drop a pre-recorded interview as we wouldn’t have had time, but we told the music team to put it in the log as a back up in case people didn’t answer their phones or the phone in the studio didn’t end up working. When I then arrived back home and was finalising the running order with the in and out words, calls to actions, stings and timings, I was listening to the package that Tony had created and it didn’t sound as interesting as we thought it would’ve and we asked the question, what is the point in having this as a package when he can just say it in the show instead as there were no external interviews or anything, so we made the last minute decision to scrap it, but we want to use it as extra content to go out within the week on social media.

Then on Sunday, we couldn’t all meet up so we had a group Facebook call and had a runthrough of the script to make timings amended to what they needed to be. Unfortunately this was the only way we could do it, as Phoebe was on a train and I was on my way back from work, but it did work quite well we found so at least we know we can do that if all else fails for the next coming weeks. The runthrough seemed to go fine but was obviously quite difficult as sometimes peoples internet would cut out so we couldn’t run to time precisely, but we know that Tony and Fay can fill when necessary and that the timings on the running order are very rough but more of a guideline than anything else. Also, Clare found a female gamer that was willing to do a live phone call with us the following day, so we ended up messaging her quickly to ask if she would instead of one of our other guests who hadn’t been replying.

Monday morning we came in at 8am again and went straight for a speaking runthrough in RP2 in like we did in the group call to double check timings as we can’t get in the studio until 10am. However when our studio time rolled around, Tony and Fay were called away which was really annoying as I needed to practice using the desk. When they did eventually come back, the system that we were using kept messing up and the tracks weren’t being put in their carts, which threw me considering the amount of things that needed to be done that day. So what ended up happening was Callum is now permanently driving the desk, Phoebe is on socials and keeping in contact with the OB, and I’m in charge of phone calls and keeping to timings as much as possible, which works better as I would not have been able to do that and confidently drive the desk. Our feedback from the show was FINALLY POSITIVE which I can’t believe, but we keep getting mixed messages about the music which is so annoying as we don’t know what we are expected to do with it, but we are going to try and implement all the feedback necessary.

Week 7

Monday night we had our time off the module as it very stressful during the day. We also informed Lucy and Eliza of days that we were meeting, but no one turned up.

Tuesday we came in at 9am sharp and straight away started to plan the next show, which is to do with gaming addiction as it has recently been classified by the World Health Organisation and there are lots of debates surrounding it currently, for example on the TV show This Morning, they had a mother and son come on talking about how “she’d lost her son to the game Fortnite” which was a brilliant angle for us to take. The plan for this week also is to have a live panel to discuss symptoms, treatments and everything to do with the debate in the middle section of the show. We also did a pre-recorded interview with Nathan, who used to spend a lot of his student loan on in-app purchases in Fifa, which could be seen as a sign of addiction so that we can have both sides of the story. We also contacted a load of experts and professionals for live interviews and so far we have a hypnotherapist, a councillor, and a gamer for the panel and we are working on getting live callers for this as well. We had a meeting with the digital team to discuss how this would work as well as we need to get it sorted for the OB as we would like them to be a part of it as Simon is at an addiction rehabilitation centre for his broadcast.

We also started researching more into gaming addiction and have asked Clare who is doing Update again for the angle that she is presenting from which is how has it been classified as an addiction, so when I was planning the first running order, I knew to put her package right at the beginning to open up the topic and get people involved. This will then be followed by a live caller as part of our feedback was that we needed to get someone on a lot sooner. We also decided on the tracks for the week as the music team want to pick them so there are no overlaps within the shows, so Phoebe and I put together a list that we would like for them to pick from. I have also started editing down the phone interview that we did ready to go on the log for Friday.

On Wednesday, I had the first draft of the running order up so that Tony and Fay would be able to at least see the times that they needed to fill in order to decide what parts of the research is necessary. However, we did get the news that the tieline has broken which is very frustrating as we don’t know how to fix it. I also had the first draft of the clock for us to run by, but baring in mind that these things were subject to change.

Thursday Tony, Phoebe and myself had a meeting as unfortunately Fay was ill the night before. We had a meeting to go over scripts and clocks which needed to be tweaked as Tony was bringing the almost finished script to the meeting for us to try and time the content to make sure that it fits with the timings that we’ve got for the show already. I also edited down Nathan’s interview today and found that my editing skills are getting much better as I am able to be more decisive about what needs to be taken out and what needs to be kept in.

Friday morning we had a group meeting where we finalised our guests for the panel and our live callers for the rest of the show. I also finalised the running order by adding the cues and the in and out words for all the necessary parts, but unfortunately we didn’t have the audio for Update due to some difficulties which we knew about prior so it wasn’t too bad. Tony and Fay had to leave fairly early that day so after they left Phoebe and I sat and worked through the social media calls to action to decide where it would be best for them to come in the running order and most importantly what the question would be. We decided on the simple question of, “Do you think the world health organisation was right to classify gaming as an addiction?” due to the amount of controversy surrounding the topic.

Sunday we had a run through in the studio at 10am as we wanted to do the timings again with the extra research, amended running order, and amended script. What we’ve found in runthroughs is that Tony and Fay do tend to speak a lot quicker so it’s hard to determine the accurate times for the show, so it does take a while to get it right, but it’s much better to do it multiple times than once. Later that evening, all hell broke lose. We thought everything was organised and then we got a message saying that one of our panel members could no longer attend, which put a massive spanner in the works. We spent quite a few minutes stressing in our group, but we came to the conclusion that nothing could be done so we put out our feelers on social media in hopes that someone would respond. Unfortunately, I currently have had no wifi since Tuesday so I was a bit helpless in this situation, but Tony kept me as up to date as he could. I came up with the last minute idea that if we couldn’t get anyone physically in that we would skype them and link the laptop up to the desk and do it that way. Thankfully, we found someone else and three extra callers for the show so it was all fine, but very stressful and a little too last minute for my liking.

Monday was the day of the show, and with the tieline not looking like it would be fixed for a while, panic was setting in. Our show looked like it would be running fine now after the panel issues yesterday, but now it appeared that our plan for OB to be done using skype wouldn’t work as the desk didn’t seem to want to work. This was all very last minute, but Callum managed to get his laptop and make it work through the cable connecting it to the desk, as skype on the desktop didn’t want to work. I was in charge of making sure we kept to time and that all the callers were ready. Unfortunately, one of the tweets that went out was wrong as Phoebe was downstairs fetching one of the guests who was a little bit late, and missed the start of t he show, but it was taken down quickly and the problem was rectified. We also had to axe the live caller segment within the panel, as the phone would not connect between the studios.

Overall, I think the ambition of the show paid off and the feedback we received was good. The main point to take from it was to take away the music, as we proved that we can fill a full hour with all the research that we do, but also that we need to organise our content better as we have a lot of it. We are also going to try and implement a lot more callers within the show.

Week 8

Today we had our first meeting for VR. Lucy turned up today for a couple of hours to help out with the research and give some extra ideas which was helpful, but could’ve been used earlier. We discussed how we are going to implement our feedback into our show as they suggested that we needed more live callers to make it sound more like a talk show, but unfortunately this is the trickiest part of this show as our show time really should’ve been 1pm-2pm when people have their lunch breaks and would’ve been able to phone up, considering the demographic of our station. We have also decided to take out all the music which is risky, but we know we can fill an hour and we really need to push ourselves this time for the final show. I have been putting together research links into the document on the website, as have Phoebe, Tony and Fay. We gave up with asking other people as the only person who was willing to help was Adam Clare and they both have ongoing roles which they need to dedicate their time to. It’s frustrating though as this is a team effort and we all know that this is the show that really does need the help, especially with finding guests and live callers as well as the research, but we’ve managed so far so hopefully we have enough. When we were talking about the running order and scrapping the music, we decided to have one track as a back up in case we were running under time. Usually the track that we pick for the end of our show is something nice and upbeat to flow with the station and to flow well into Natalie’s show and keep up the energy. As it was the last week and this is meant to be a fun show, we thought it would be good to use something fun such as Come On Eileen – Dexy Midnight Runners, which was agreed the day before but we were then told that it was being replaced by a song we really didn’t think fitted with our show as it was slow and not how we wanted to finish on. Unfortunately, so very patronising messages were sent to our team which we felt was unfair as we know our show best and know what would fit with it, especially as our feedback every week was to make it more light-hearted. We solved this with a message to Eliza where we told her what was going on and that we weren’t trying to cause arguments but we know best with our show, so we just scrapped it all together.

On Wednesday, I went home as I had a family member in hospital but have been working on the running order there. I also contacted my friend who is a teacher and organised a pre-recorded phone interview with her for Saturday to talk about the use of VR in education. Also I got in contact with someone who makes a podcast in America called Voices of VR and he agreed to do a live interview on Skype first thing, so I amended the running order to make sure that his was right at the beginning so we don’t keep him too long for time difference reasons. I also finished the first draft of the running order and the clock today and placed it on the drive. We have also been making sure to be sending updates to Lucy and Eliza so that they are aware of what’s going on as it seems to be that they think they are being kept in the dark, when really sometimes there just isn’t anything to update them on, and don’t want to bombard them with useless messages.

Thursday I spent my day focusing on other work, as this is still taking the majority of my time, but I did find time to write out the questions for the interview with my friend who is a teacher and sent them  to her and to Tony who was going to be in the studio recording it.

Saturday I edited down the interview with the help of Phoebe who was my second pair of ears as I only had an hour free to edit it down. Unfortunately, the final interview time meant that the running order would have to be changed again in order to fit this in, as there was so much good stuff that was said and that made relevant points to the conversation topic that week.

Sunday we had a group Facebook call again to make sure that all the timings were correct. We found that sometimes they were not right, but I readjusted the timings on the running order in order to make it fit around the script that Tony and  Fay have produced. We also have added in another caller as we’d rather have more of those as opposed to show chat, which is what we were asked of in our feedback.

On Monday morning, I did the final adjustments on the running order, made a new clock, and then just made sure that we had all the correct numbers for the live callers. Unfortunately our caller in America wasn’t awake so we quickly had to fill in with a backup which actually worked really well. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, until 11:59 when the whole system crashed and we had to get everyone in to fix it as there was no spare studio for us to use. We ended up starting around 7 minutes late so we had to cut quite a bit out and quickly at that. We also had issues with the phone calls, as we had so many one after the after, we had to call the listeners from studio 5 while we were live from studio 6. We couldn’t call from studio 6 as we didn’t have enough pre-recorded content so we wouldn’t have been able to call them without everyone hearing the buttons or me briefly them quickly. Unfortunately this meant that there was a slight echo on the interview, but there was no way we would’ve been able to do the calls from the studio. It is frustrating, but I don’t know what else we would’ve done. The system crashing just threw everything off in the studio unfortunately. However the OB sounded really good and we did have some great live callers which I think made the show,although it was definitely the most stressful out of the four that we have done which is frustrating as this is the one we were most looking forward to and would’ve been the best out of all of them.

We got our feedback though and as expected, our ambition levels were appreciated and taken into consideration. Overall, I’m happy with the shows and feel that I’ve improved massively over the last month in my radio skills and I have enjoyed the majority of this.