Monday 25 March 2013

Radio Kerry Week Three


Week three at Radio Kerry and it seems that my time is flying past. It has probably taken me the best part of the previous two weeks to acclimatise to being back in an office environment.  As the staff in the newsroom are well settled in their jobs, and are very good at what they do, I was finding it difficult to get work.  

With this in mind I spoke to the producer of the newsroom and she suggested I cut the piece I’d done on the Mobile Library unit down to about ten minutes. This would make it suitable for broadcast, which would be great for me. So I set out the edit the three hours of recording down to only ten minutes. As hadn’t done much editing before, or at least cut out two hours and ten minutes of material, this was going to be a big task.

For the rest of the week I listened to the same two guys talk, and talk and then talk some more. It was great experience for me, being brutal, cutting out some very good material so as to keep the narrative in place. As features and documentary making is what I want to do in radio I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction. Also I’ve realised that with local radio it’s all up to you, you have to find the story and you have to produce it. No one is going to hold your hand, its sink or swim but at the same time everybody is very helpful.  By Thursday I had nine minutes and fifty-four seconds of a good piece ready and while I could have spent another week fine tuning it, I didn’t. Another thing I’ve learnt is when to stop, when to be happy with what you’ve got.

The last thing I did on Thursday evening was close the file and email it to the producer. It felt good pushing the button, sending my piece out there. The last I heard is that it will go out sometime this week, which would be great if it happens.

On Friday I decided to get myself out of the newsroom and see what else was possible in Radio Kerry. Doing the piece during the week broke my link with doing news stories, which was a good move in hindsight. I spoke with other presenters and got to know the lie of the land a bit better. It quickly became obvious that everyone does their own thing and also that nobody does just one thing alone. If features are what I want to do it is up to me to find the stories and bring them for broadcast. I went to lunch with one man who has a few different jobs in the station. He encouraged me a lot and told me of all the pitfalls but mostly it was all good. Hopefully this week I’ll be spending a bit of time with him, learning the ropes and how to survive in the radio business.

Friday afternoon I hid myself away in an empty office. The idea was to come up with ideas for small features, ones that would be of interest to a Kerry audience. After about an hour I had a long list, some strong and others less so. I approached the news producer and she was very happy with them all, if I can deliver them. This was great news and I was delighted with her response.

All in all it was a very educational week at Radio Kerry. I’ve learned a lot and now I have a lot of work to do.

A big change from where I had been at the beginning of the week...


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