Starting off the module I was very curious as to how the module itself will turn out. I hadn’t really done my research beforehand. I knew what I was going into, however I had no idea that it was going to be as fun as it was. There were moments of happiness and frustration, as there are in nearly every group lead module. The first few weeks were very informative because of the amount of listening the whole class was doing, it was interesting to listen to some of these speech-based radio shows. I definitely enjoyed most of the listenings that we had to do. As the weeks passed on I gathered enough ideas to understand fully what we were being asked to do.

When the groups were released I straight away realised how much talent we have, I pretty much knew everyone in the group so we didn’t need do get to know each other. I knew that we might be the best group in terms of what we had to offer radio wise because of the amount of radio students we had and also because I knew the people in our group had a lot of radio experience or have done more in that sense than me or were very good journalists.

When we chose the roles, we didn’t seem to bond as well as the other groups were. That did worry me a bit and I knew our group had character because everyone in our group has their own unique persona. As we all spoke to David about this issue it seemed that our group started building chemistry a bit later than everyone else or maybe I wasn’t aware of the issues that other groups were facing.

When we chose the group roles I wanted to perform a role which I’ve not done before. There was a part of me that wanted to present and I feel like I would’ve done a great job as I’ve presented quite a few shows before, however they were on a music radio station. I chose to be the Outside Broadcast Producer. The role was demanding and even though the final result didn’t go to my plan I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. Technical issues appear, however we should’ve planned more intensively a plan B if the OB didn’t pan out as we wanted to.

I think as a group there was some good content done but it took a lot of chasing people up to write up scripts and running orders. I think that I could’ve contributed more as the OB Producer but I feel like me and Blessing (OB Presenter) did a good job with the OB in terms of the guest we had lined up and the content within that. Blessing helped me a lot even though she was the Presenter for the OB. She took care of some things which I should’ve done but I simply didn’t have the time to do or because I didn’t plan out my free time well enough. Blessing was there to help whenever I needed something which made her a very good person to work with. The guest we had for the OB was found by Ellie, which of course I’m thankful for because our guest, the Pudding Fairy (Laure) was lovely and came all the way from Sussex to Brixton to help us.

For the OB we went to the chocolate museum in Brixton. The OB was a disaster in my opinion. Jokingly I can say we were sabotaged with an older tie line. I used a new tie line since the start of module and the only group which went to Windsor took the newest one.  I’m sure if we had the modern tie line there wouldn’t have been any issues because I would’ve used my hotspot and 4G was brilliant in Brixton. Either ways it’s in the past now.

Sara did a great job as the editor. She was very invested from the moment we were put into the groups. She tried to bond us as much as she possibly could because technically she was in charge as the editor. Everyone did their piece in the end, everyone had their input. Every group member contributed in some way, however I’m a bit disappointed that the final show was more stressful for most than enjoyable. It is what it is.

Oskar Idzikowski