ALICE WASS
Exploring Media

This week has been interesting, containing some very exciting new opportunities. I have also recorded and edited more audio for Anne’s feature ‘The Wall’ for her Sunday show. I continued to have a lot of Soundcloud work to be working on editing and uploading, especially as this week was the deadline for all content needed for the UCB1 Newsletter to be finished and available.

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The most exciting part of my week was pre-recording a new feature on Simon’s Drive show, his new game ‘What’s in Simon’s Sack’. Five items are in a sack, then one gets taken away and listeners have to work out what is missing. For this he asked if I could come and speak on air and take part in the game. This is the first time that I have spoken on national radio, and it was crazy to be able to listen in with my friends and family all over the UK and hear my voice on air. I really enjoyed helping Simon with this section and had a lot of fun doing the recording, gauging how best to speak whilst keeping the timing in mind. I feel that even though the approach was very different to how I spoke on my trial show for Presenter Training, the range of speaking techniques have really helped me. Also with Simon I have continued to learn how to use the studio desk with the pre-record of ‘The Weekend Starts Here’! I am getting much more confident and making less mistakes and really enjoy using the system and technology.

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The next part of my Presenter Training is to help Samuel with the planning and producing of his Easter Monday Bank Holiday Special. All the Presenters take it in turn to host a specialist show on the different Bank Holidays. Samuel and I have been planning what to focus the show on, and have decided to follow the journey of the Wintershall Theatre group. Every Good Friday they host a show called ‘The Passion of Jesus’ and perform it in Trafalgar Square, with an estimated 20,000 people attending every year. We are currently organising content areas we want to include, and planning how to record them, such as whether we should attend rehearsals to speak to the cast. I am so excited to be involved in such a creative and important show and I look forward to seeing how it will progress as the weeks go on.

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I have continued to research potential guests for Ruth’s show, and have started a new method of collaborating with Christian magazines and newspapers exploring whether they could help us connect with people’s personal stories. These stories would feature on Ruth’s show and in return Ruth inform the listeners where the interview came from and how they can access these magazines and newspapers. Following the incident with the UCB1 show last week, we have suspended booking any new guests until a meeting at the end of this week to discuss matters further and come to a solution regarding the content issues. There have been a few more conversations prior to the meeting, but things do not seem to have improved yet. Part of the problem may be an unclear perception of my role and the tasks which I do for Ruth. The Friday meeting did help to get everything out in the open and clear up any misunderstandings. Many new action points have been created to test out whether this will aid the flow of communication between the shows and help with content.

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This week the famous David Lloyd has returned to give more training. I have attended an Ofcom training session with him which was really helpful. I had some previous knowledge of the rules of Ofcom but had not fully understood them in depth. This training has massively expanded and clarified my knowledge.

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I also attended a one-to-one session with David Lloyd discussing interview technique. This time we listened to the audio of one of my Impact Stories when I was interviewing. After we listened to it he gave me really helpful feedback, about how I could try and get more details by using phrases like ‘paint me a picture’, and also better phrasing of questions to make sure answers can stand alone. It was nice to hear that he thought I was very friendly and that I made the interviewee comfortable. I look forward to testing out these new suggestions when I am recording more impact stories.