Talk Radio Blog – OB presenter
In this module, my role for the talk radio live shows was OB presenter. As someone that has not done much previous presenting, I put myself forward for this role as I believed it would be challenging. The target audience of for our group was 16-45 year olds that live and are based in London. With this in mind, we had a couple of practise runs with doing the OB live, we reported live from Wembley and Harrow so that myself and my OB producer could get a feel for how the tie-line works. A few weeks before are live shows, we went to Pimlico, where the OB would be held on the day to test the signal and make sure that the area was appropriate for the OB, that there was no major noise interruptions or bad signal. The live OB, was partly a two way with Rhys, as well as an interview with Isaac Withers, who was currently doing an interview at the Bishops Conference in Pimlico. Our OB was based on the topic of young people and religion; therefore, I did a lot of research into this topic, so I could write the script and prepare a few questions for Isaac. Also, it was important to know the topic well, so I could understand branch off what Isaac responded in the interview. Overall, the interview went well, we found an area within the bishop’s conference that had strong signal, so that we could hear the show life and hear our cue for when we needed to go live.
On the day: as well as the OB, I also contributed by voicing a package about the lecture strikes across various universities. As part of this package I also interviewed a student who had been affected by these strikes. On the day and throughout the upcoming weeks I also wrote a few scripts for the show and read over them to make sure they where suitable for our target audience. Here is a run down of our weeks leading up to the final show:
Week 1 (8/3/2018) – Once we were in Groups, me and Kaylee went to Wembley to practise doing a OB with the tie-line, it was then where I realised that the OB may be a role I would be interested in.
Week 2 (15/3/2018) – This week we where stilling trying to figure out our roles, but also discovered our target audience so we could start to think of ideas for our final show. Also this week we did a practise ten minute magazine style programme.
Week 3 (22/3/2018) – This week we finalised our roles, I decided to be OB presenter and Megan was going to be the OB producer. As a group we were starting to some up with ideas for our show.
Week 4 (29/3/2018) – This week was the pilot show, myself and Megan went to Pimlico to do a live OB. Although we did not have an interview as planned we still decided to go to Pimlico to test the signal and also to practise the logistics of handing over the tie-line with the previous OB group.
Week 5 (5/4/2018) – This week a majority of us where unable to attend due to a Radio conference in Norwich.
Week 6 (12/4/2018) – This week was our Live shows! We met at 9AM in university to make sure we had plenty of time to finalise and perfect scripts and practise. Later in the afternoon me and Megan made our way to Pimlico, via collecting the tie-line from the previous OB team in Baker Street, then we met Isaac in the Bishops conference centre. Together we set up the tie-line and found a suitable place to carry out the interview.