ALICE WASS
Exploring Media

Appeal has been a week like no other! The Appeal is a weeklong event which asks our listeners to support the station financially, as it is a registered charity and completely listener funded. This means that all regular scheduling is cancelled and every show is focused on the Appeal. This has meant the majority of my regular jobs have not existed this week. There has been nothing to edit and upload to Soundcloud, no guests coming into the studios and limited contact with the presenters.

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This week the Testimony part of my job has been the main focus, and I have been working shifts with Rebecca to make sure one of us is always in the studio. I have been working 11am to 7pm all week, and although this work pattern did feel a little strange, I did get use to it, but I think I prefer working the earlier shift. This suggests in the future I would prefer to work on breakfast, morning or afternoon shows rather than drive shows. How my role worked this week was once people had donated over the phone or online, they were invited to make a comment about why they were donating to UCB. I then phoned these people back to record their Impact Stories and do a quick edit so they could be played out on air as soon as possible. To make the Impact Stories accessible to the presenters in the studio I have learnt the new skill of uploading content onto the Hot Keys. In Zetta, the system they use to broadcast the show use Hot Keys, which are buttons containing short cuts to content. Once I have gone through the process of uploading the content onto the Hot Keys the presenters in the studio can just press one button and it will play out on air. Learning how to upload content to the Hot Keys took me a while to get use to, and I was nervous, as it is on the live play out system and I would hate to do something wrong and affect the live broadcast! However, after doing it a couple of times with Rebecca, and on my own, I now feel confident with the process of uploading content.

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This week I have also been doing phone interviews for Simon’s Christmas Traditions section on his Drive Show for December. I have recorded and edited three new people from different countries, which has meant learning how to use a lot of new software. The first one I did via Phonebox, which was no problem, as I use it to record testimonies all the time. One lady, from New Zealand requested to be interviewed via Skype. This meant using a studio which had Skype, using the microphone to talk to her, but as I cannot record the audio on Skype, I needed to record it on the computer software called WaveLab. This meant learning how to use WaveLab as I could not re-do the recording.  Luckily the system was fairly simple and I managed to record on it and save it without any major issues. In contrast trying to use ‘ipdtl’ turned out to be much more difficult, and I had to get help to sort it and fix the technical issues on the interviewee’s end. However, I did manage to use the system and once again used WaveLab to do the recording. Both pieces have now been edited and I feel more prepared for the upcoming Christmas recordings.

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I have also been doing a lot of administration for the ‘Mark and Mark at Full volume’ project happening next week. I have been learning how to fill in the correct forms required to get food, accommodation and hotels booked for all of the guests. This has involved liaising with a wide range of people and a lot of careful organisation and planning to make sure that everyone is accommodated. I believe this would be something that a Producer would be involved in and therefore these skills of people management and organisation will be vital for the future.

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The Appeal week has been quite interesting, and completely different to an average week. I have not enjoyed this week as much as my normal weeks as I missed all the usual Radio Producer roles that I do. I think this indicates that this current role is one that I do want to do.