ALICE WASS
Exploring Media

This week has been more slow, which has given me time to be more creative and spend time coming up with new content ideas. I have been researching and finding guests for Ruth’s show. I am currently working on a balance of light-hearted and serious guests to make sure we include mix of stories. Even though serious stories with happy endings can be very encouraging to listeners, too many focusing on difficult serious issues could lessen the impact of the stories overall. Looking for suitable stories can be difficult at times, especially when the show is so content heavy, however, I am currently booking interviews for April and May so keeping ahead of myself.

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Simon is taking over the Saturday lunch time show on UCB2 this week. He is doing a Shopping List game feature in the show and I am again speaking on air, in the format that there are five items I would like him to pick up from the shop for me. Simon needs to remember these items, but he can only remember four and needs the listeners to let him know the missing item. I suggested giving this game a bible connection by only using food which is mentioned in the bible. The missing item is remembered with listeners help and suggest a recipe involving that ingredient and encourage them to make the recipe over the next week and send him in a photo. For example, this week the missing item was ‘beans’ so I have suggested a Three Bean Chilli recipe.

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There was an Easter content meeting on Friday, which I spent time trying to come up with content ideas. This is something which I really want to become more confident doing, and was why I pushed myself to suggested a show idea to Simon earlier in the week. However, I still feel nervous about suggesting ideas around very creative people who know what works well for radio. My content ideas include a five-part short series, which I have organised for Ruth about ‘identity’. I have reached out about Easter themed interviews. A possible game could be to set Easter themed challenges for a week and participate and send in photos. Finally, my favourite idea was for the Presenters do a tasting challenge of Hot Cross Buns. This would involve trying the new interesting flavours such as, maple syrup and blueberry, chocolate and salted caramel, carrot cake, savoury cheese, vs. the traditional hot cross bun. I think this could be a lot of fun for the Presenters and listeners, and the idea would work well for social media as they could rank the in flavours overall.

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I have continued to edit audio and upload interviews to Soundcloud. This is something that I really enjoy doing and I am now trying to improve the platform. I have now organised that when Ruth’s guests are in studio Social Media will come and take a photo of them to use as the Soundcloud upload image. This will hopefully increase the visual appeal to Social Media and encourage them to post links to listen back on the UCB Media pages. This would also benefit Ruth’s show as more people will be aware of the interview and could then listen back.

Next week is going to be a very exciting week with a big project I have invited to participate in with the TV team.  

Skills:

• Researching, organising and booking interviews

• Co-hosting a radio feature

• Creating content ideas for existing shows: games, features, how to build and develop current idea

• Researching information for the new content ideas 

• Editing audio on Adobe Audition to upload onto Soundcloud

• Working with Social Media to improve the promotion of guests on 'This Is My Story'