Contribution for Pilot Weeks 1 and 2

Drawing upon my previous experience of Head of Music in second years music radio module I recalled how particular and precise we had to be with our remit. Therefore I worked closely with Jay on the music policy. We drew up an initial draft which as to be expected had to be revised and redrawn several times as to fit with the decisions made in our full team production meetings. Once that was out of the way for the time being the music team pulled together a rough track list and we decided on an overall style. In our early meetings we were recommended to look at magic chilled for some inspiration towards our playlist. We did just that and with some deliberation our playlist was born. On the morning of our first pilot show me and Jay worked on inputting songs on myriad and put in the intro/extro information into myriad. I also went to Boxpark Wembley and by chance came across Bombay Burrito which I recommended for use for the OB team.

First Show – Vegan

The main criticism with the music team after the pilot weeks was the male to female artist balance. Although our playlist in it’s entirety was well balanced we knew we had to adhere to that in scheduling, therefore we balanced the first shows playlist accordingly. I then spent time attempting to build clocks directly into myriad like I previously did in music radio. However this time we ran into problems doing so. The maximum amount of clock templates had been reached because of smoke and we couldn’t go about deleting any of those as we pleased. Luckily Jay found a clock builder online and that’s the one the music team has put forward.

Second Show – World

In preparation for world food week I have mainly spent time sourcing a mixture of “world music” for temporary addition to our C list category. I have added the allowance for temporary additions into the C list for the different weekly themes. I thought carefully about the C list additions for this week as we didn’t want to stray too far from the sound of station. Therefore I have put forward artists such Hugh Masekala who has a big western following as well as Jupiter & Okwess who have collaborated with well known western artists. I felt it was better to bring in artists that could bridge the gap between traditional western and other worldly music so it isn’t too jarring for our demographic audience. We were given feedback stating that our A and B playlist needed more clarification into their differences and a justification for so. We were also questioned if there were too many classic songs being played throughout the programs. In order to get round these we placed our older songs into the B list and replaced them with more current sounding tracks. This therefore lowers the recurrence of older music and enables more contemporary songs to get through into the schedule which hopefully will diminish the radio 2 style of sound that we were described as in feedback. I briefly spent time researching some restaurants and potential places for our OB but the team made progress quickly in that area before I was met with any replies.

Third Show – Fish 

After my additions for the World playlist were ill received I walked out of the feedback session slightly confused. Before leaving to go off on the OB with Phoebe I had shown the Jupiter & Okwess and Hugh Masekala tracks to the presenters which was advised by Matthew when he met with me and Jay in his office that morning. I then sent over information on both tracks for addition into the script to prevent them appearing to disjointed from the rest of the playlist. However, for whatever reason that relative information wasn’t included and I walked out of the feedback meeting with egg on my face. In the build up to fish week I entered song intros and duration’s into the running order. I then spent a considerable amount of time building the log in myriad on the Friday before. On the morning of the show Rhys discovered it wasn’t there and before long we discovered someone from the smoke committee had deleted it all despite being clearly told not to touch it. I wasn’t too pleased about that. While the show was going on there wasn’t that much that was required of me so I just got involved with all the social polls and competitions to make sure I was doing something at least.

Final Show – Dessert

In preparation for the final week the music team and I worked on the playlist. More specifically we had to decide on a big show topper. We needed a song that would truly sign off on the wonderful four weeks of Bite Radio’s broadcasting. After debate we settled on Queen “Another one bites the dust”, due to it fitting well within our demographic and music policy. The fact it bares the stations name in the title and that it’s an overall peoples favourite also factored into the decision. The OB team managed to secure naked dough for the final OB which was a big hit for the group. The Friday before our final transmission I went into RP2 to assist in building bites new live studio. I found myself running around on many errands that day which involved tasks like checking out and setting up the cameras and green screen with Matthew and Gabriel, acquiring props for our set i.e the big heavy table me and Joe carried from the loft up to RP2. It was really fun getting hands on and transforming RP2 with the guys.

When we had finished the set roughly we ran lots of tests in order to check the quality of the stream. We discovered a few problems at this point with studio 4 and the quality of audio going out through our twitch stream. We did as best we could and stayed as late as we could on the Friday to help fix as much as possible. On the day of the show I arrived and finished some minor tasks off with Jay and participated in engaging with Bites social media to allow them more audience interaction if they wanted to. All in all this module was good experience and one I really enjoyed partaking in.