Connor Drew – Role – OB Presenter & Producer.

The first few weeks were the introductory weeks where we listened to audio David asked us to listen and then we all gave input, thoughts and opinions on the pieces.  We were also challenged to make an interview type scenario piece of audio based around a piece of news that was topical for that day. Me and Sara did a story about love island. We then presented these to the class.

After these weeks we were put into our groups where we got given a target audience as well as what style of show ours would be. We were given an age demographic of 35 to 65 and we were more female-oriented but still would target some males. We were given the style of a magazine show, we instantly starting looking similar shows within that age group such as Woman’s Hour and we came to the decision that we were the radio version of TV shows such as This Morning and Loose Woman. We started to come up with a small running order for the practice looking at topical things we would put in and what would fit best with a phoner, disco and OB etc… I suggested we keep our home reminds / entertainment section as with magazine shows you tend to have repeating things like you’d expect within an actual magazine. We then split our selves into roles where I took the role as a scriptwriter. Personally, I feel like I helped the group understand the age demographic a little bit more, explaining to them the mannequin process within a radio station and that we came up with ‘Kelly 38’ as our main target audience.

There were a few sessions that I missed due to reasons however the group were very helpful at keeping me in the loop with everything within our shared google drive. When we started to do mini pilot runs of the show we started to structure how the show would be introduced at the start which was something I helped with whilst still being a scriptwriter. We did a mock-up phone in where I scripted and played the part of a psyolgocist to help give us an idea of what this section of the show could sound like. For this, I suggested adding the phone number and text number and to do call outs a little early within the menu as this is something traditionally done within speech radio to get a call and response type of effect from the listener.

We realised later on that I fit the role as an OB producer more than a script writing, so upon this, me and Chloe switched roles. From this, we arranged meetings outside of class time and I would suggest ideas for the OB. We had already had a pre-planned a royal segment and myself and Niham looked into what was happening at Windsor where we found that there was an Easter event. I suggested we do the OB from there and that could lead into our royal update section. Later on when it came to putting the idea down on planning documents I realised that there were a few events over the Easter period, so I adjusted the OB to be what’s happening at Windsor with the two events being ‘Inside The Royal Wardrobe’ which was an activity event for family as well as an exhibition for Princess Eugenie wedding. I put together detailed planning documents throughout the weeks getting information about the two events as well as mapping where we would do the actual OB. I also suggested that we do the Lindo Wing OB as a back up as Meghan could have given birth on the day of our broadcast.

At this point we were around about 10 weeks in and were ready to do our first mini pilot with an OB, we decided on doing a story about Islam due to recent attacks that happened around that time. I use this as an opportunity to show Richard who was the OB presenter at the time how I wanted to format documents with bullet points of information so he wouldn’t need to rely completely on a script. Chloe wrote a loose script with Richard and I tweaking slightly and what I noticed was how Richard needed to loosen up a little especially when it would come our final OB.

Following on from this I was in contact with The Royal Collection Press Office who unfortunately couldn’t get a representative to speak for a package idea we had the start to in the outside broadcast. Along with this I also tried to email and call Windsor and Maidenhead council to see if we could get some written permission for the OB however we were unable to get a hold of them. During this time we also did another pilot which would include the OB. For this, we did it on the topic of the Wembley knife crime attacks that happened. We went to Wembley for the OB and after this OB we decided that it would be best to change the presenter for the final one to myself and Richard be my Assistant Producer as we thought the style of presenting I could add to it would be beneficial. We also realised we needed some Windsor facts which we could incorporate if we’re running out of time.

The week after this we met for the final time before going to air. I and Makkee had a practice run and relaised the presenter switch was a better choice. We decided not to script the whole thing as we wanted this to be more a conversational type bit and so this was where the bullet points I made for the prep sheet really helped as they acted as a guide with what to say.  We also ended up using the Windsor facts within the segment anyway as we were able to draw upon Megahn and Harry recently moving there and I used a famous neighbours facts of celebrities who live in Windsor to help segue that together. We finialised the documetns and sorted meeting times. I also booked out the tieline to take with me the day before and we finialsed the back up OB at the Lindo Wing looking at points such as how many generations of royals have been there. I also came up with the idea that we do a package of me traveling there as we wer struggling to get a represantive to talk for a package at the start. At this time we were struggling for an in-person guest as well for one our topics, I tried to help with this by asking around and managed to get someone who regularly features on Sky News however they backed out last minute but said to the group we needed a backup just in case in which we did.

Thursday the 11th came around and myself and Richard headed to Windsor, I recorded audio as I went on the journey and sent it back to the group. I walked around Windsor and decided to move where we were going to do the OB from The Long Walk as we had more space and more of an atmosphere. I informed the group back in London and Niahm also told me that we were to stay on the line after the OB had finished just in case Meghan went into labour while we were there. Following this, we did a test and a dry run through before the final show, this was an opportunity for me to hear the package nail timings. We then did the final show which overall went well. The reaction i had with being there for the first time which was suggested by David added so much to the OB and was genunine as this was my first time there.