Pilot 1 17/02/2020

This was the first week we were making shows for Atlas London. The show we were doing for this week was only an hour-long so I created a running order document based off of the clock that Sara had made. I also decided to use these shows as an opportunity to test run some of the feature ideas that I had, I decided to test the What’s the Dish idea first and created a soundscape a couple of days before the show, we also thought it would be good to try out the “My family does that too” feature as if it worked it would be good to use as a weekly feature

On the day of the show, I filled in the running order’s timings and drove the desk for the music show.

Pilot 2 24/02/2020

This week was our first full-length show so we decided that prior to the show we should have a meeting to discuss some of the content ideas we had for the shows going forward. One of the ideas we came up with was a feature for love week similar to the feature in the Metro where people send in descriptions of their crush which we thought we could adapt for radio on the music show, we also thought we should have a feature where we talk about some of the events going on in London that our audience would be interested in and also related to them we had for the show that week.

On the day of the show, I created a new running order that would accommodate for the now 2 hours that we were filling. I also created a document for the “Let the Telle see the Novella” feature for Stephen that had some real descriptions of different TV shows and some that were fake and it was up to the presenters to decide which ones were real based on their descriptions. We decided to have Stephen in the studio at the time to act as the quizmaster for the feature so that Callum and Chloe could play against each other as well as get him to promote his show later on to give the illusion of it being a pop-up station. I also drove the desk for the music show.

Show 1 02/03/2020

This week was the first of the assessed shows and we had decided to go for entertainment as the theme for the first show as we felt that the theme had been quite strong in the pilot. The show’s running order stayed pretty much the same as the week before as the theme was the same as the previous week.

On the day of the show, I created some new descriptions for the quiz doc for Stephen to read during the “Let the Telle see the Novella” feature as well as draft up a document for Charity read for the Eurovision chat part of the show. I also drove the desk for the music show

Show 2 09/03/2020

For this week’s show, we had decided to use a love theme to link the show’s content together. On Tuesday, Sara and I met to discuss some of the content that would be in this week’s show. We decided that we would use the crushes feature that we had thought of in the group meeting the week before as it worked well with the theme for this week and we worked together to find events in the coming week that we could mention on the show. We also had a competition this week to go with our sponsorship from Vapiano, the competition prize was a meal for two at the restaurant if a listener could unscramble to the dish that we had put on our socials. The competition will be resolved next week.

On the day of the show, I adapted the running order from last week to show the content that we had planned for this week’s show and the new playlist and was also responsible for the timings of the running order and making sure that everything was timed correctly. We had also moved the OB from the speech sow to the music show because the topic of conversation in the collective didn’t really fit what was happening in the OB so instead it was put into the first hour of the music show. This meant that we had a bit more content than usual meaning that in order for the running order to stay on time I had to take out some of the songs. I was also responsible for driving the desk for the of the whole music show.

Show 3 16/03/2020

This week was food week on Atlas London, which meant a lot of the content for the week’s show was food focussed. Most of the ideas that I had come up with for the food edition of the show lent themselves more to digital content rather than on-air content as they were quite visual. One of these ideas was to have the presenters try a variety of different snacks from different countries and film their reactions for YouTube and the website. We filmed this in the greenscreen room a couple of days before the live show so that we ould send the raw footage to Ozzy to edit and some of the clips could be played out on-air. Whilst we were recording this I looked for some of the events that were happening in the coming week for the “what’s on” feature and made sure that they were all food-related events in keeping with the them that we had chosen for this week.

On the day of the show, I created a soundscape for the “What’s The Dish” feature. I also checked over the timings for the running order as the adverts were different lengths to what they were on the running order so I changed the to the correct timings so that the timings were correct. I also drove the desk for the music show.

Show 4

This show would have been Traditions week for Atlas London. For this show, the main draw would have been a live lounge featuring a steel pan band that we had been planning to use since we had settled on the idea for the station. We would have also done the regular features “Let the Telle see the Novella” and “My family does that too” both made in a way the fitted the traditions theme that we were going for this week.

We also adapted some of the features such as the “What’s on” feature so that it reflected the coronavirus outbreak, we did this by instead mentioning events that listeners could be a part of from home without having to go out. We also would have had a good news link similar to how we had the link last week mentioning how people were dealing with the outbreak in Italy. We would have also had links where both of the presenters talked about their own traditions within their own families that would have lead into”My family does that too”

The Live lounge feature that would have taken place towards the end of the show would have also featured a short interview with the spokesperson for the band asking about some of their own traditions as well as their music.

Reflection

At the beginning of the process of creating the pop-up station, we wanted to create a station that we believed accurately reflected the multiculturism of London. My role in the process started off as the head of news as it was a role that I believed I had been quite good at in previous modules so would be able to bring my strengths to that, by finding news stories from around the world that would still be relevant to a London based audience, in a similar way to BBC World Service. However, I later swapped my role with Ryan as he wasn’t comfortable with the role of music content producer and as it was something that I would like to do more of in the future we decided to swap roles. I then set out to create a fun music show that also reflected the values of the station and also fit the personalities of the presenters and fit the chemistry between the two of them. As the weeks went on my role also became more about making sure that the running order was to time and that all of the timings were correct so that the show didn’t underrun or overrun.

To begin with, the shows weren’t as meticulously planned as they should have been and later were. This meant that some of the content for the pilots were often created on the day of the show and planned very close to when the show was supposed to air, in future I would make sure that all shows are planned as soon as possible but are dynamic enough to account for changes in the real world, which is a balance that can be hard to strike with radio. This is why I think it is important to spend a lot of time with the presenters planning the show as it helps to make the show sound more organic. I would also make sure to have plenty of practice driving the desk on the run-up to the show as I feel that some of the slip-ups that I made whilst driving the desk were due to being away from it for a while but once I got the feel for it again there were fewer slip-ups in the later shows.

One of the main things I learnt about the role that I undertook is how important it is to work with the presenters when coming up with content and creating the show as a whole. This I feel was quite difficult considering the circumstance both of the presenters were in with them having to balance it with different roles as well as being presenters, both of which were roles that were more important and required more work than presenting. In future, I would make sure that I have more time with the presenters to plan the shows with them so that they also have a hand in planning it making the subjects they talk about more organic and dynamic. 

Whilst setting up the Pop-up Station I realised that it’s very important for everyone to be on board with the idea as I feel that a lot of people have different ideas of what the actual theme of the station was which made it difficult to agree on the type of content that we wanted to be putting out, this was something that was a large detriment to our station as if some of the people working on the station are unclear on what the theme of it is then how is the listener going to understand the theme. I would definitely focus on finding a theme that is easy to understand without too much explanation, fortunately, I think we eventually found a way to describe our station without it being too long-winded but this was something that needed to be established from the get-go.