Week 1: (20th October)

Our first group meeting mainly consisted of us discussing which genre we would be most comfortable doing as a group. Early on we narrowed the choices down to two favourites which were gospel and contemporary adult. We all liked gospel but some members were concerned that our lack of knowledge of the music would be problematic. I suggested that gospel may be best suited to the time of year we are broadcasting as gospel choirs are known for Christmas ballads. After a vote we all agreed to go for Gospel. We then read out the roles to the group and people put themselves forward for what they felt they would be best at. There were some disagreements within the group at this time as there was an overlap of roles with many wanting to be producers, in order to resolve this we made a deputy music role which Andrea was happy to fill and everyone said they were happy with me taking the studio producer role. We left the meeting with the aim to all go away and listen to lots of different gospel stations to get an idea of station sound.

Week 2: (27th October)

After our week of research we came together to finalise our station sound and narrow down our target market. We went round each group member and discussed what kind of stations we had listened to, we made points about each station what we liked about them and shows we enjoyed that we could possibly base ours on. We decided that Premier Gospel was our favourite station and had an audience demographic that we would like to produce a show for. James made us a page on Trello which is a programme similar to google docs, we divided into teams and i made a production card on the site so that the production team could post regularly to keep everyone in the loop with what was going on and any ideas they wanted to put forward.

Week 3: (3rd November)

This week myself and Tommy had a meeting with Curtis as our other presenter Molly was unfortunately ill to discuss feature and link ideas for the show. We spent all afternoon brainstorming and then later came together and whittled it down to the top few favourite feature and link ideas that we wanted to include in the show. These included:

• question of the day ‘Are we losing touch with the true meaning of Christmas?’
• Spirit Drive: a passage from the bible to inspire listeners for the day
• Dates for the diary: Important upcoming dates in the gospel community
• Twitter poll: top Christmas films to bring the family together
• Artist Free Play

We reconvened as a group at the end of the day and updated everyone on our ideas and what we had done so far, this was very productive and helped everyone improve their ideas further. We still needed at show name at which point Afia suggested ‘Fresh’ which then evolved into ‘fresh feeling’ that was Sam’s idea. Beth then suggested the name blessed which was my personal favourite. The group was split with the decision so we suggested to decide properly at our next meeting.

Week 4: (10th November)

As a group we gathered in the morning and informed everyone of any changes that had happened over the weekend. The i suggested that we decide on a show name so that everyone could make a start on the jingles and social media. We set up an anonymous poll of Trello with our two favourite name ideas: ‘Fresh Feeling’ and ‘Blessed’ the majority vote was in the favour of Blessed. Myself and Tommy then wrote a short bio for the shows website before the playlist meeting. Andrea and Adam had been set the task of bringing together 50 songs for the A, B, C and Gold category. As a group we went through the songs one by one playing 60 seconds of each deciding whether it suited our station sound and if so what category we would put each in. Many of the songs we liked as a group however there was a disagreement when it came to genre as myself and some other members felt that the more Rap influenced tracks did not fit into our playlist. Many of the songs also had a very slow ballad feel so i made the suggestion that before finalising the playlist more upbeat tracks should be included as our show will be aired in the middle of the day so should be uplifting for the listeners.

Week 5: (17th November)

I spent this week mainly working individually planning the show and forming the first draft of the show clock. I spent a lot of time listening to premier gospel critically making notes of what times certain features where on and what bits i would like to include in our final show. I then finalised with the news and ads team what times they were aiming for so that i could schedule the clock correctly. I completed the first draft of the clock which i ran past James in order to get a second opinion, we both agreed that it was a strong first draft and one that we could add to and develop up until broadcast day. Getting the clock down on paper really helped me visualise the show and get more of an idea of what the finished broadcast would be like.

Week 6: (24th November)

This weeks main focus was to digitalise all of my production documents. I found that a lot of the websites used to build online clocks were not good very good quality. James suggested the site UClock.it and agreed to pay the £20 charge as we could use it for future projects. I built one clock for each hour and saved them both as PDF documents so that everyone within the team had access. Myself and James then worked together in order to produce a menu template, i then filled this in with all of the show content referring back to the show clocks i had created. I had hand written notes on all of the features that i wanted to include in the show so i decided to type these up and expand on them with James so that everyone had a copy. On Thursday we decided to have a pilot show to get an idea of what works well within the show we have made so far. After a team meeting with Matthew we decided that many of our ideas needed developing before we did a full run through of the show. There were some things that needed to be sorted out on the production side like competition and finalising a running order. And within the other sub groups many things were missing such as branding, advertisements and there wasn’t yet a music playlist set out for the show.

So within separate teams we worked on what we needed to developed in our sub groups. I had written a very rough draft of the script as well as a show menu so this enabled  Myself, Tommy, Molly and Curtis to practice the link elements of the show from the script. Very early on it was apparent that both Molly and Curtis struggled reading from the script, they said there was too much information on the page and to me it didn’t sound natural when the were reading. So i decided to create a document that was on A4 page per link, with bullet points of what needed to be covered in a very large font. This way they knew the points that they needed to cover, but could say it in their own words. We had another practice a few days later and the new presenter notes pages that  had created worked really well,  both presenters said they felt a lot happier with the new scripting system. After our meeting with Matthew it was brought up that our show would be improved if it had a competition. I sat down with the presenters to brainstorm ideas, myself and Curtis thought giving away gospel gig tickets would be a good competition. After searching he found that the gospel house choir were performing near our broadcast date at the jazz cafe. I wanted to make our competition something a bit more special so ran the idea past James of giving away a meal at the shard and then tickets to the gospel house choir that evening and he thought i should go with it. Our station was promoting the idea of selflessness so didn’t seem fitting that listeners entered themselves into the competition. I came up with the idea of nominating someone you know that has done a lot within the community or has helped someone.  The last two days before the pilot i was away but made sure that i helped out wherever i could by updating documents in one drive and asking other members of the group if they would like any assistance.

Week 7: (1st December)

Due to me not being present for the pilot Tommy took more of a producing role, i got James to speak to me after the pilot and send me the meeting minutes of the feedback so i was kept in the loop. There was two main pieces of feedback we received for the production side of the show. They were show structure and the other was that our competition was more of a giveaway. The competition was easily amended i suggested naming it our big gospel giveaway and just needed to be amended within the scripts and within branding. Production had a meeting while i was away to adjust the structure of the show along with James overseeing. James was contacting me throughout asking my opinion on the changes that were being made. Tommy offered then to make the adjustments to the presenter script. I then made a new updated clock of the new show structure for the one drive and also updated the show menu ready for the final show.

Week 8: (8th December)

I came in at 7:30 on the day of the show as i wanted plenty of time to make any final changes and help any other people that were struggling with their work. Tommy had sent through the final running order for the show so i back timed it all and found that there was an error and we were two minutes over so have to make cuts to different links within the show so we hit the targeted time. Myself and James then went and made sure that all of the songs, jingles and branding were in the system so James could start building the log. I then met up with Matt and checked that everything with the OB was as planned. He said he hadn’t heard anything from the artist for a while so there was some initial doubts so i suggested finding her on Facebook and messaging as she is likely to reply to that faster than an email.

Curtis and Molly arrived in at 10 so got them into the studio and settled. I then printed off all of the scripts, running orders, clocks and menus. I printed off all of our social media and pinned them up in the studio as the presenters said they were not confident remembering them. At 10:30 i made final preparations talking the news teams making sure they were happy in the other studio and ready for 11.

The first hour of the show went smoothly as could be expected, there were a few links that ran short by around 30 seconds so i hand wrote some points onto the presenters scripts in order to fill the time lost and this meant that we met the second news broadcast exactly on time. I was then told that our OB presenter had cancelled which was worrying at the time but James assured me that he was on it and would give me the info i needed before the time came. A short while after i was given a brief description of the artist that was performing and was told other than the artist nothing to the main plan of the OB would not change. The artist free play, a song chosen by the artist played in the middle of the OB changed due to artist selections after myself and Adam listened to it it made references to drinking which i though was not suitable, to make sure no offensive music was aired i instead told the OB team that the artist has to ask for a song we have chosen for her. Unfortunately this was not the case, the OB ran short by 8 minutes meaning we had to quickly make a plan of how to fill the time.

Andrea then told me during the second hour that she had done an interview with an artist and wondered if i would like to put it in the show, although very last minute there was still time to fill as the OB had ran short so i got James to put it into myriad while i briefed the presenters on background information of the interview and how i wanted it to fit into the show. There was still two minutes of chat at the end of the show that needed feeling so i quickly briefed the presenters of what they could talk about on air and promoted them throughout so we hit the time. Looking back i think i should of scheduled a last minute song into the log so that there was more of a balance between music and talk within the last 5 minutes. But overall i was generally very happy with the show and especially with my studio production and presenting team.