Once Atlas Radio was decided, we all decided our roles and I opted for music content to challenge myself but quickly felt that that was a rash decision. Chloe, who is the editor called me in to discuss my role and we decided it would be best if I swap with Adam and become the head of news. I was happy to take on the role of Head of News as I have created bulletins in previous modules and I enjoy making them.

Role: Head of News

Pilot 1- 17/02/2020

The first of our pilots was 1 and half hours. As a group we decided we were going to split our shows so it would be a 1 hour speech show and a 2 hour music show. For this pilot we decided on a half hour speech show and then one hour for the music. I was assigned two bulletins for that show and I did it at the beginning of the show and then in the top of hour.

Pilot 2- 24/02/2020

I was given more responsibilities for the station as I was in charge of putting some content online for our website. I would create weekly blogs that would go onto the site in correspondence with what the theme of the week was. In our next pilot we had a full 3 hour show and I was in charge of creating four news bulletins at the top of each our. Opening the show at 12pm and ending the show at 3pm.  There were some issues with the bulletin in particular with the music bed as it didn’t really suit the station so it was a challenge to find one more appropriate and it also didn’t mix very well with the serious news stories being broadcast.

Show 1- 02/03/2020

It was the same as last week with regards to the format and would be for the foreseeable, four bulletins in a three hour show. We started off with entertainment week on our show and the first bulletin headline was on the coronavirus outbreak which would become escalated over the coming weeks. I felt the bulletins got better each time but I feel as though I should’ve worked harder to vary my news stories in other bulletins to stop repeating myself.

Show 2- 09/03/20

We decided on Love Week as our theme and there was an OB linked to it as well as various features on the show. I created a blog for the top 10 dating locations in London which was referenced on the show and also the OB took place from one of those locations, Kew Gardens. I felt the bulletins were more varied than last week and I had finally found a good News Bed. Sure, I made a few mistakes in the bulletins but I’m glad with how they went and I didn’t repeat the same stories in multiple bulletins. This only happened on a couple of occasions as there wasn’t any relevant news to the station.

Show 3- 16/03/20

This week we had food week on Atlas London and had several bits of food items on the show. I feel in terms of the news I did my best as it was predominantly about the coronavirus and I was pleased that each and every bulletin was new and didn’t have a rehashed story. I made too many mistakes on a couple of bulletins which was frustrating as this was literally our last show. But overall I’m pleased with the progress made from the first pilot to the last show in terms of structure of the news and my delivery.

Show 4-

Unfortunately due to the coronavirus pandemic we were unable to record our last show and end Atlas London prematurely. It was a sad day on the final day as we felt we couldn’t finish the show properly but still had ideas for our final show. We decided on traditions week and what I decided for the blog was a Top 10 traditions celebrated in London and also because people were self isolating, a 10 things to do insolation blog.

Unsurprisingly everything in the News was about the coronavirus in Entertainment and Sport too. Creating the bulletins wasn’t hard but the overall surge in the virus has made it mentally taxing as I didn’t want to repeat the same thing. I would’ve recorded the bulletins live in correspondence with the headlines in that hour.

Critical reflection:

To start off I wanted to be the music content producer which was a naive call on my part and I quickly changed my role with Editor Chloe to become the Head of News. I was happy with the change as I felt more comfortable in the role and had the skills to do the job. I set out to achieve the goals of delivering well informed bulletins in a set structure. I opted to have two main headlines first followed by two London stories and finishing with an entertainment story and a sports story. This was made from the beginning and the format did not change. I was also assigned to create blog posts for our website which coincided with the themes of each week.

First of all I felt at the beginning I struggled to really grasp the feel of the station in terms of what kind of news to broadcast. I didn’t really know what fit Atlas London and then once the format I devised came into play I was a lot happier and could work better with the format. In terms of the delivery for the news I feel I have a good voice for the news however I knew I needed work. I would come in for several days and create practice bulletins and demos to prepare myself for the pilots and upcoming show. it was difficult in the beginning because I was trying to hard in my bulletins. Once I had made myself comfortable with the demos the next struggle was Burli. The news system didn’t work well in the studio so I opted to script bulletins on the google drive and then take any audio clips and log them into myriad and play them manually in the studio.

One thing I would have done differently is continue to do demos throughout the show weeks, I stopped once we got to the pilot. I feel if I had continued it would have maintained my confidence that I had at the first show and by the end I was quite nervous and felt under pressure. One thing which I changed was the variation between news stories. I know in the beginning there were stories across multiple bulletins and I made sure each news bulletin was new. I could have also changed some of the stories I broadcast as they were not relevant to the station or the content. Like Max Von Sydow and Donald Trump for example.

I learnt a lot about the role on the job. I learnt how to properly format the news as well as implementing clips into the bulletin. From doing a previous module ‘Bulletins and blogs’ I was able to take the knowledge from that and add to it here. I found it more challenging as I needed to come in at the correct time to present the bulletin and make sure it was the correct duration of 2 minutes. I feel as though I can script bulletins correctly and have a good presenting style and could do news reading in the workplace.

I learnt a lot from pop up station and the thing I would have done differently next time is had better time management when it came to the blogs as well as the bulletins. As finding the news on the day was made a lot harder by myself and I should have looked for a more broader range of topics. I feel as a group collectively we communicated well but we could have done better in all areas of our work. In areas where others needed help we were all there but there always could have been more to make a smoother run for the station.