Work Attachment at Newbury Sound

My second work attachment for the course was at the community radio station Newbury Sound. Covering all of the West Berkshire area, Newbury Sound is the top local radio station for music and community news. Even though I had to commute from Southampton each day for the week of work experience, which took me around an hour each day depending on traffic, I was eager to see the differences between working as part of a regional station (as I did on Wave 105) and a smaller community-based station.

On the first day, I immediately noticed differences in the way the station operated. Firstly, there were a lot less people coming and going in the station, including presenters as some shows are syndicated from Newbury Sounds sister station Andover Sound, and the news was partly syndicated from an outside news provider. The editing systems used at Newbury Sound were very different as well, considering that Wave 105 used a software that organised all the news projects together to make them easier to compile together for each bulletin. Since Newbury Sound use the same bulletins for some of the day and then change them in the afternoon, they don't need to change the copy for the bulletin each hour and therefore don't require the same system. This meant that the copy for each of the news stories was written in a word document and then compiled together before being read out on air, and they used a separate software for editing the sound clips which, to my joy, turned out to be Adobe Audition 3.0 which I am already well versed in.

Already having a knowledge of the editing software and the techniques used in Radio proved very useful, at it meant I could get out and capturing news stories right away. Just some of the stories I covered through the week were: a local school taking part in a nationwide Cookathon competition with help from a celebrity chef, the re-launch of the Newbury Carnival over the summer, two local women doing a climbing expedition for charity and a teacher at a secondary school having a competition for her students to design her wedding dress for her.

Covering these kinds of news stories was an interesting change from more regional news stories that would hit higher areas, as they had a smaller focus on the local community which meant I had to change the way I approached the news stories. Since they were more community-based, I could approach them in a more relaxed way, which meant that editing the stories afterwards became easier as well as it meant I remembered the best bits of the interview more.

I'd like to extend my thanks to Chris Wright for the opportunity to work among his team at Newbury Sound, and Faye Marsh (News Editor) for all her help and advice throughout the week, and not simply asking me to make teas all day either. Working at Newbury Sound was a valuable addition to my work experiences and showed me a different side of radio work.

Work Attatchment at Wave 105 FM

When I  was lucky enough to get a solid two weeks work experience at Wave 105 FM (The South's biggest variety of music), I thought that my tasks would mostly be limited to the computer doing a lot of filing and cataloging of news stories and music files and shows and whatnot. As it turned out, not more than 1 hour of being in the news room of the surprisingly small radio station that has a far bigger audience than you would expect from looking at the building itself, I was already out capturing audio for the news bulletins.

The staff at the Wave 105 team were among the nicest and most patient people I have worked with, as well as very easy going. They knew that I had come from a Masters course, but I assume they didn't quite know what to expect as far as my background knowledge of capturing audio and working in radio went. As it happens, a lot of what they asked me to do (especially in the first few days) was stuff I was already experienced in and I felt very confident going out in their news car and getting plenty of Vox Pops (peoples opinions) on current news stories that were top of the news agenda of the day. They then introduced me to their audio editing software, which took some time to get used to as it was not something I was very used to using at all. The on-going joke among me and a couple of other people on the news team was how much easier our lives would be if we had Adobe Audition 3.0 installed on the computers, as this was the software I was more used to using.

The news team themselves were very accepting people who were willing to teach me a lot of new tips and tricks for writing and reporting in a radio news team that I wouldn't have picked up anywhere else. Shaun Aquilina was very helpful in teaching me different techniques for reading the news. He helped me improve my diction, my phrasing, my tone of voice and above all helped me learn that there are a couple of key words in each sentence that you should hit harder than the other words in order to give the sentence the most emphasis possible. After going through around 20 different recordings of me reading various news bulletins , there was a noticeable improvement, which I owe mostly to the helpful tips of Shaun and the others.

Both Charlotte Butt and Liz Allaway helped me out a lot with improving my news copy writing to be used in the bulletins every hour. Apparently, when I came on to the team, my writing was "way too formal and BBC-like" when they take a more conversational approach to the news, telling it how you would tell someone you knew well. I really felt like it was a case of Nature VS Nurture at the Wave news room, as I was going more against what I had been taught to write into their realm of writing for a way that people want to listen to. By the end of my time there, there was a noticeable improvement in my writing as gradually there was less and less that someone else had to edit on my copies (particularly Charlotte, as she went through my pieces with me and helped me notice more and more which parts of the sentence didn't need to be used). I didn't get to work much with Shireen Jordan, as she was more based in the Morning News segments, but any time I had to check facts with her she was very helpful in teaching me.

And of course, news editor and head of the team Jason Beck was paramount in my learning curve over my two week experience. Jason oversaw my entire process from start to finish every day that he was in and was incredibly helpful in teaching me about the technology they use at Wave. In particular, he showed me how to set up phone interviews so that they run straight through the editing software on the computers. He was also in charge of organising which news stories I would be covering on which days, and who I would have to call in order to set them up.

Nothing was set up for me at Wave - in fact, it was more like being thrown into the situation, which I actually enjoyed as it became more of a challenge rather than doing the same things I had already experienced in my Radio classes. Any interviews that needed to happen weren't previously set up - I got given a phone number to call and I had to organise the entire interview and make sure I could make it there on time. It really did feel like I was a part of the team at times like this, when we would get certain breaking stories and someone would hand me a name and number to call, and I would go out and interview them, normally straight away.

One of the biggest claims to fame during my two weeks working at Wave was that I got sent out to interview the Lord Mayor of Portsmouth, Paula Riches, about the ceremonial weekend marking the decommission of Ark Royal. When I turned up to the Portsmouth Guildhall, I found my way to the office of the Lord Mayor, and she ushered me into her private study which, square foot for square foot, was probably about five times bigger than my lounge. Although I was told I could only refer to her as "Lord Mayor", she was very welcoming, and we sat in two massive armchairs for our interview but not before she offered me tea and biscuits. Out of all the interviews I did in the two weeks for Wave 105 (including covering the protest marches in Southampton over Union jobs, and the scrapping of EMAs at colleges) I truly think that interviewing the Lord Mayor was one of the highlights.

When my last day came, I was truly a little sad to be leaving as I felt like I had picked up quite a lot from the helpful and welcoming Wave 105 news team. It was truly an occasion that called from the bringing in of cake, which I happily provided. I had a great experience at Wave 105, and I would thoroughly recommend it as a work experience placement for anyone interested in following a career path in radio and wants to work in a warm and inviting workplace.

Thanks go out to Shaun, Liz, Charlotte, Shireen, any presenters I may have made tea for and had a joke with, and above all Jason for allowing me to come and work for them for two weeks.