Pop Up Station Week 1

So over the last week, we have been really working towards what this station would sound like. As my role of speech producer, I want to ensure we are creating an easy listen, relaxed sound not only with some of the music we play but also how our presenters act and present on air. Last week, we held pilots with different presenters to try and work out who would work best together. But not only that, I was keen to see how presenters would react on air when I said in their ear “we’ve lost a guest so need to fill” this helped us to determine who would work well and how we want the shows to sound. It was also really clear to me over the last week that I was not sure on the sound of the station. After discussions on Monday and now hearing the imaging, we are clearer to what the sound of the station will be. This helps myself and Holly in producing our presenters as we can understand the general sound to the station.

Over the weekend, I put together the running orders according to the clocks we decided on in class.

Following choosing our presenters, myself and Holly worked through the running orders for the next four weeks. We complied the ideas of the group for ideas and put together our running orders for the next four weeks. On Monday, we sat down and put all our bids out for our guests for the next four weeks. After sending around 10-20 bids on Monday we have had a couple of people come back to us and tell us if they can or can’t do a segment on the station.

So far we have booked for the next four weeks:

• Ben Coomber – Nutritionist – Ben has the top health and fitness podcast in the world and is going to talk about his experience doing Veganaury.

– Peggy Brunache – Food historian – who is going to talk to us about the history of world food for our would food week.

• Barry Vera – Barry is a chef in London and is keen to get involved with the station. Barry also hosts multiple radio programmes and podcasts.
• Sushi Queen – she is going to come in and talk all about sushi for world food week.

Other outstanding bids we have put out are with:

Green Bay Super Market

Plant Based Supermarket

VEGAN Life Live

KARIN RIDGERS – Founder of VeggieVision TV

The spice shop london

SpiceMountain

CoolChile

Annie Gray – Food Historian

Rachel Lauden – Food Historian

The international Food and Drink event at the EXCEL london

Olleys Fish Experience

Northern Ireland Food event – Borough Market

Romeo’s bakery

I have began following up to those I have not heard back from as we are getting ever so closer to March. For our pilot week I have booked Barry and Peggy to talk to us.

Myself and Holly are also brainstorming ideas for our final week as we want this week to be the biggest one. Ideas for a cook along seem the highest rated idea. We are going to follow this up.

We are holding test pre pilots with our presenters on Monday to establish how we are going to work effectively.

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Week 2

This week was the first pilot week. After spending the whole week booking guests and writing the scripts for our presenters, I was very excited for the day. On Monday, we planned to do some tests with our presenters before taking to the air. However, there was a delay in doing this as the music clocks we’re not set. Meaning that myself and Holly had to spend the first part of the morning putting together the music clock in Myraid before we could start rehearsals.

After setting the music clocks, I briefed Kaylee and Joe on the scripts and the running order. They both hadn’t really used scripts before so I spent a bit of time explaining how we can go slightly off the scripts but if we try and stick to the key elements to it then it will allow us in the control room to know their ins and outs for timings on music/jingle.

We began by doing a couple of tests on the opener, I was really keen to ensure we are getting their personalities across in the opening link as this was going to allow the presenters to show the audience what to expect in the show and the sound we are trying to create which is a fun, informative and entertaining show. I worked closely with the presenters to make them feel confident in reading a script and briefing them to how parts of the programme would work.

After our rehearsals, myself and Holly were able to understand what worked well with the presenters in terms of cue points, how they introduced guests etc.

Now it was time for the the live show. I felt the live show went very well. We learnt a lot and got to understand what would and wouldn’t work. Straight away I felt that we had too many songs in our playlist so that is something we have removed for next week as we will go down to four tracks. I also felt that myself and Holly lacked support from our team on Monday which made it quite stressful to get the music clocks done, scripts, tech opping the second studio, speaking with the OB team. Therefore, we have asked Matthew Saunders to be our assistant producer to help support us more when we are live.

After our debrief on Monday, it was clear that the transition between our two hours and hour three was not consistent. Therefore, myself, Holly and Matthew all met on Tuesday to discuss how we can move forward to create a clearer consistent sound.

Our way of achieving this that we will test on Monday is to:

• I will produce the whole three hours (Matthew will set up hour 3) (Me and Holly will setup hour 1 and 2)
• Matthew will assistant produce the whole three hours
• The presenters will stay in the booth and Holly will tech op
• More guests in the third hour

For next weeks pilot I have booked:

• Dominka Piasecka –  Spokesperson for The Vegan Society to talk about the history of vegans and its popularity

• Ben Coomber – Nutritionist  to talk about his experience of Veganaury and how to continue to be a vegan. Very excited to have Ben on the show as he has a huge social following and has the number one health and fitness podcast in the UK.
• Maxine Duncan from Vegan Apron to talk about how to cook a quick and easy vegan meal. Maxine will come into the studio to show her vegan cookery delivery boxes that people can subscribe to and she will explain how to make a vegan meal in 20mins
•  Stephanie Brookes – Food Critic to talk about the top 5 vegan restaurants in London. Stephanie considered the go-to contact for recommendations of the best places to eat in London and beyond

Due to the timings of the station airing changing, I have spent most of the week rearranging guests for the next four weeks. Some guests have dropped out due to this change so I have had to get new guests.

Here are some of the guests I have booked this week for the next four weeks:

• Vegan Life Live Event spokesperson to talk about the event. And I have managed to get two pairs of tickets worth £46 each to give away on the station for the event. I have spoken to Stuart and he is very happy with this.

• CoolChile which is a Mexican spices shop, someone from the shop is coming in on world food week to talk about the different types of Mexican spices and to do some live tasting

• Peggy Manarche – Food Historian to talk about the history of world food. She was great in pilot week so we need to make sure the presents questions are more structured.

• Kenny McGovern – Author and chef to talk about his new book : The American Diner Secret: How to cook America’s favourite food at home

• I wanted to run an item on on London’s Best Fish and Chip shop, I got in contact with the owner and he is really excited about the station. We both felt actually rather than doing an interview on the station an OB would be better. Therefore, I have spoke with the OB team and they will be doing they broadcast here for this week.

This week I really hope we all come together as a team outside of the studio team to ensure we are all working together and ultimately working from the same page so we all understand what we are trying to achieve. Also, I hope that any feedback can be given whilst we are on air to ensure we can correct any mistakes whilst we’re on air rather than carrying on through the programme.

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Week 3 – Popup Station

This week we decided to reherse vegan week in in order to help us with how week 1 would actually sound. Therefore, I wanted to have similar guests to week 1 and the pilot week to see what would work and what wouldn’t. I booked the following guests for our pilot week:

• Dominka Piasecka –  Spokesperson for The Vegan Society to talk about the history of vegans and its popularity
• Ben Coomber – Nutritionist  to talk about his experience of Veganaury and how to continue to be a vegan. Very excited to have Ben on the show as he has a huge social following and has the number one health and fitness podcast in the UK.
• Maxine Duncan from Vegan Apron to talk about how to cook a quick and easy vegan meal. Maxine will come into the studio to show her vegan cookery delivery boxes that people can subscribe to and she will explain how to make a vegan meal in 20mins
•  Stephanie Brookes – Food Critic to talk about the top 5 vegan restaurants in London. Stephanie considered the go-to contact for recommendations of the best places to eat in London and beyond

During the run up to the second pilot, I asked the presenters to do their scripts as we agreed that this would be the best thing to do. They weren’t entirely finished on time, meaning that I spent some of the morning finalising and finishing the scripts.

We started doing some test runs before the pilot began in order to establish timings etc.

Once the pilot had finished, I felt it went a lot better than our first pilot. The presenters were able to learn how to work around their scripts, learn how I can help to prompt them in their ears with questions and more.

Our main lessons that we learnt from the second pilot we’re that the presenters would write their own scripts with myself checking them during the weekend before, that we needed to ask more demanding questions (I will try and prompt the presenters to do this more) and that we just need to make sure we are getting the best out of our guests.

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Week 4 – Popup station.

Its show week! Following the feedback from last week. I made several changes to the running order which included:

• Moving Ben Coomber to earlier on in the show to be be able to draw on his answers with other guests
• Move the OB team earlier in the second hour
• Extend some of the guest items to make sure we are allowing enough time.

Along with all these changes, it meant changing some of the guests as they could not make the adjusted times. Therefore for our first week on air, I booked the following guests:

Ben Coomber – Nutritionist  

Dominka Piasecka – Spokesperson for The Vegan Society

Benarsh Laly – vegan chef and owner of Leafychef

Stephanie Brookes – Food Critic

Michaela Pontiki Founder and CEO of www.arapina.co.uk Arapina is a Healthy Lifestyle Bakery

Jane Lambert – Marketing Manager for Vegan Life Live  

 

I also booked the hour 3 guest for Matthew Saunders who was Stephen Conway – Founder and MD of Pure Heavenly Chocolate – 100% Vegan Chocolate.

During the week, the presenters had done the scripts. I spent some time over the weekend editing the scripts just to make them flow a bit better and I added a lot of provoking questions for the presenters to ask guests just so we stayed clear of general questions.

I decided to get in nice and early for the first show, as in previous weeks the clock in Myraid had not been done by adding in the jingles and beds.Therefore, I got in at 08:15 in order to have some time to make sure the clock for the three hours was done and was segged.

The first show began and sounded great in my opinion for a first show. We managed to give away the tickets that I secured for the Vegan Life event and had a general good response for the show. We had some hiccups along the way but dealt with them in a calm manor, an example being that the OB team had not tested the equipment prior to the OB and it didn’t work. So 5minutes before, they rang me asking what to do whilst I was on air. I told them that we will do the first hit over the phone and for them then to try and find WIFI to do the second hit. This worked.

Following the three hours, we received some feedback but ion general the speech content feedback was great. I was very pleased for this. We have learned some lessons on how the presenter throw forward, how we can try and tighten links and how we could do with adding in some more features. Matthew S, knows he has to book his guests from week 2 onwards for hour 3 as he is the set up producer for that hour.

For week 2, I have booked the following guests:

Peggy Manarche – Food Historian – to talk about the heritage of world food

Jackson Bashford from CoolChille – to do a live tasting of Mexican food in the studio

Kenny McGovern – Author and chef – Kenny’ s book:The American Diner Secret: How to Cook America’s Favourite Food at Home was released on Thursday so we are going to talk about American food

Rachel Redlaw – Writer and Cook –  Run’s the Tiniest Thai Life club

Dan Toombs (a.k.a The Curry Guy) – Has a really big online following and writes books on Indian Curries

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Week 5- World Food Week

This week was World Food Week! At first, I was a bit worried about what content I could source for this week but I have managed to book the following guests:

Peggy Manarche – Food Historian – to talk about the heritage of world food

Jackson Bashford from CoolChille – to do a live tasting of Mexican food in the studio

Kenny McGovern – Author and chef – Kenny’ s book:The American Diner Secret: How to Cook America’s Favourite Food at Home was released on Thursday so we are going to talk about American food

Rachel Redlaw – Writer and Cook –  Run’s the Tiniest Thai Life club

Dan Toombs (a.k.a The Curry Guy) – Has a really big online following and writes books on Indian Curries

Dan Toombs – The Curry Guy – to celebrate Britians Love of Curry

Following last week’s feedback that the show needed to tie together a bit more. I came to Mary with the idea that we base the show around we are taking the listeners on a journey. Mary liked this idea so we worked together to create the slogan for the week which we could then work to create the on air branding:

bite is flying you round the world in three hours, touching down across the globe to pick up tips, reviews, and recommendations from foodie nations worldwide

This slogan helped us shape the idea to have different world themed beds, and to use the sound of planes etc in our jingles.

As usual, I spent the day before the live show making sure the scripts were done and made sense. I got in early at around 8am on Monday to build the log as it hadn’t been built. The show went out and sounded really great. We had some really strong guests and our presenters worked well to ask challenging questions.

For our seafood week, I am still to confirm any guests, however we have some ideas on what we want to do.

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Week 6- Seafood Week

This week was Seafood week. Looking back on last week, we didn’t really have much of an idea what we wanted to do for this week. However, myself, Mary and Holly brainstormed a few ideas which helped to shape parts of the show. Originally, I had booked a Sushi Chef to come in to the show, however  she cancelled during the week.

We wanted to cover light and hard stories this week. Therefore, I booked all of the following guests for seafood week:

How popular are these fish foods and what is the most popular?

GUEST: Barry Vera – Celebrity Chef.

Phobe was producing a package on the different types of seafood, I spent some time in the week feed backing ideas for the package to her so that it could feed in nicely to Barry being on the station to talk about how popular seafood actually is.

Is it healthy to have just a fish diet?  

GUEST: Helen Money – Nutritionist

We we’re keen to do something on people being pescatarian’s as it worked really well in Vegan week. Therefore, I booked Helen Money to talk about the health side of being a pescetrian. This would follow on nicely to our next guest as we could ask questions of the back of it.

What does it mean to be a pescetarian?

GUEST: Johnnie Jackson – CEO of Pescetarian Society

Johnnie was able to tell us why he is pescatarian and what it means to him. This interview went differently to how i thought it would. Johnnie was a very opinionated person and was making some very large points. I pushed the presenters to ask follow up questions and to interrupt him, however they did not do it to the complete effect that they could of. So therefore, this is something we will work on for next week.

The next item was:

What is Eel Pie Island? Article on website

GUEST: Dan van der Vat – Co-Author of Eel Pie Island

I wanted to make sure we were bring that local effect to our output. So therefore, I spent a lot of time researching about fish and the london community. And I came across Eel Pie Island. Which was just a brilliant pick with a brilliant story. I briefed the presenters fully on this story, however after the interview we felt that in their scripts they could of set the item up a bit more to really give it the justice it needs. Something we will work on for next week.

Fishing and Brexit? What does it all mean?

GUEST:  Miriam Greenwood – Researcher in the British seafood supply chain

Into the next hour and obviously fishing and Brexit is quite a big story and I wanted our audience to find out what it means for when we leave the EU for our sea waters. Therefore, I spent a lot of time finding a suitable guest and managed to get Miriam Greenwood, a researcher int he biritish seafood supply chain to come into the studio and to do a pre record interview. She provided us with a real understanding on what would happen after we left the EU for our waters.

This week’s OB came from Olley’s Fish and Chip Shop. In the initial planning stages for the station, I contacted Harry the owner to see if we could interview him however we both thought it would be better to actually do an OB from his top fish and chip shop. Therefore, I organised with the OB team for them to do their OB from that shop this week.

Ocean plastic pollution

GUEST: Emily Penn – Nekton Trustee and Sky Ocean Rescue Ambassador

It seemed logical for us to cover this story. Sky News launched a huge campaign on the day we were on air that they would be broadcasting selected News reports from undersea to raise awareness of plastic pollution. Therefore, I was very happy to book Emily for the show and to help raise awareness of Sky’s campaign.

Fisherman’s Friends – seaswept Britcom reels in the laughs

GUEST: Toby Lobb – Member of Fisherman Friends.

After seeing the film a month ago, I thought we should definitely do something on the programme about the film. As it came out four days before Monday. I managed to secure an interview with one of the band members, however it kept changing not he day to who we were speaking too. But in the end we got Toby, a member of the band. I also secured two CD’s of the films soundtrack for the competition for the third hour and also poached the idea that we give away some tickets. It worked to play some of the music of the band and also base the show around this idea of the film being out now, to make our timing of seafood week even more better.

A very strong show this week with some great guests. We learnt that the presenters just need to set up their guests more in the scripting, something I will be checking and rewriting in their scripts this week. We also learnt they need to interrupt more to get their questions in so that the guests are not doing Monologues.

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Week 7- Dessert Week

Our final week! Now, I had a lot of ideas for what we wanted to do for the final week. The idea that we were pursing for weeks was to broadcast the whole show from the Big London Bake which is similar to the Biritush Bake Off. However after weeks of talks with the company, this idea sadly fell through.

Therefore, after the show on Monday we asked for people to give us ideas for what we should do for our final week. The ideas people were giving we’re not feasible for me and Holly to try and achieve in a week. Therefore, we left the meeting with the understanding that needed more to time to reflect ton what we should do.

Therefore, I spoke to Mary about the idea of doing the whole show live from RP2 and turning it into our pop-up kitchen! We all thought this was the most feasible idea. Therefore, we came up with what things we wanted to do on the show and I began booking guests.

As we wanted this show to be visualised, I spent a lot of the week trying to convince guests to come to the studio. I had quite a few ideas for guests, so went ahead and booked.

I booked the following guests:

Dan Beasley-Harling – Great British Bake Off Contestant 2018 – to talk us over a quick and easy dessert (phone)

Dina Dacy – Founder of Free Cakes For Kids of Camden (studio)

Ella Rauen-Prestes – CEO of FitBakes (phone)

Laure Moyle – Pudding Fairy (phone)

John Holland  – Baker from Baker on Board (studio).

Peter Joseph – Indian Restaurant Owner and dessert maker

We wanted this week to do the cook along. Therefore, on Friday we all came in to discuss how the cook along would work with John and to set up RP2. We set up the studio and decided that we would just do decorating, we were thinking on getting John to mix all the ingredients but thought that would take way to long. And decorating was a big part. Also on Friday, I briefed the presenters fully on how they should word their scripts this week.

On the weekend, I spent some time check proofing and correcting parts of the scripts to make sure we were proper setting up our guests. I also kept in contact with Billy who was making a package of the show for the first section to have re edits of the package done. To help tie in with the guest that Holly had booked,Terri Mercieca – Dessert Chef.

On Monday, I arrived at 07:45am as the log was not built in Myriad therefore I had to build that. Once that had been done we faced numerous technical problems with people stating that the output sounds different from the studio to playout. Something beyond our control and an issue we had been raising for weeks as it has appeared in our feedback. I also, raised concerns to Mary about the music this week as it was very heavy food related songs. So therefore, we both spoke to Jay to get this changed to be more consistant with previous weeks.

Tim tried to sort the issue. Once on air, we got started to a flying start! However, there was a technical problem where all our phone guests could hear everything happening in the control room as well as the presenters from RP2, Tim could not fix this issue so therefore we could not talk back to the presenters during the phone guests section. We therefore would display messages and questions on the iPad.

I wanted to make sure we we’re readdressing the whole big part of the show being the cook along. Therefore, I booked two different guests at the end of hour 1 and 2 to give some advice to Joe and Kaylee on how they should decorate their cakes. This was to ensure the listener keeps listening and watching.

As we we’re decorating cakes, I wanted to make sure there was a purpose. Yes, it was good to do it. However, I thought what if we tie in the idea of giving them to Dina Dacey from Free Cakes for Camden to give more a reason to the item and to give some much needed promo to this fantastic charity.

We wanted to make sure that at least every hour we were doing something cooking or making. So we did Waffles, tasting of healthy desserts and the cook along. All items that I think worked really well.

It was really important that we remember that we were a radio station. Therefore, especially in the cook a long I was constantly asking Joe and KAylee to describe what they doing. And to push the audience to go online and watch this. I was also pushing questions to help move the item on.

All in all. A great week despite the usual technical problems, a great core team that worked together to produce a memorable show.