Well exposure radio is nearly at an end with one more day to go. It has been a fantastic learning experience and I will take a lot away from it. I have learnt a lot about scripting and how to adapt scripts to work with the Braille note taker and I have also been able to work on my interview techniques. One of the biggest interviews I have done is with Baroness Tanny Grey Thompson. She came on to Exposure Radio to talk to us about her career and about the Paralympics in general.

I have worked with various presenters and feel that I worked well with all of them. I worked better with presenters who have worked with me before, as they understood the way in which I needed to work in order to get the show on air to a good standard. Being on air live is a pressurised situation and I learned how to cope and adapt to what ever came up in the studio in order to present the show well.

Overall, Exposure has been a very interesting and worthwhile experience. I have found out that I have good interview skills and that listening carefully to what other people are saying and then responding to it, is a crucial part of the presenter’s role. I have also learned that I am more comfortable with live radio than I am with pre-recorded radio, even though I am able to present both to a good standard.

Well a lot has happened over the last two weeks. Exposure radio is up and running and I’ve been very busy. I apologise that I have not posted as many blogs as I should have done.
The four programmes I have presented so far have been
Exposure brunch,
Afternoon delight
Specialist music show and
Exposure news.

Exposure brunch:

Exposure brunch went really well. There were no changes in the script. The adaptations that I made to the script were checked by the producer and he was happy with the changes I made. A journalism student came in to chat about news stories and a decision was taken by both presenters and the producer to include him in some of the banter and in the quiz at the end. The senior producer felt that the show producer had allowed the student to get to involved in the show. Apart from that the feedback was really good. They were happy with the repetition of contact details and the back announcing of songs. On my part I felt it went really well. The only part of the show that I felt could have gone better was a phone interview with one of the charities that Exposure radio are covering. As the presenter I felt that we should have been told more about the charity or about the person’s role within the charity before we interviewed her. The quality of the call was so bad that I’m not entirely sure what the listener would have got from the interview.
As with the other recordings, I will put the good ones on the website as soon as I receive them.

Afternoon delight:

This was a little more difficult than Exposure brunch in some ways, and more interesting in others. This programme was less scripted and therefore a lot more adlibbing was required. However, we also had gaps in the script as we wanted to cover the inquest of Gary Speeds death. We also had to be extremely careful about what was said and the senior producers along with a different presenter, separate from the show, wrote a script that would be read out about the inquest. We also had to make room in case there were developments that needed to be covered. After the Gary Speed news story, we had to change the songs so that we wouldn’t come across as insensitive to the story.

Specialist music show:

O how I wish I could have put a bit more inflection in to my voice. I have not as yet heard this piece, however, I felt that as I was concentrating so hard on the words I needed to say, that I wasn’t really focused on how it would come across. It was such an interesting show, that I hope I did it justice. Only time will tell though. The programme made connections between many artist and ended up with making a connection, though it may be tenuous, between Billy Idol and Laura Marling.

Exposure news:

This was a news programme that lasted 15 minutes. I had ten stories with clips to fit in to that time. My note taker only tends to read half lines and this caused a problem with reading the stories as a professional news reader would. A sighted person can read ahead and know where to put the inflection in their voice. I feel that if I had more time to read the script, I would have been able to do it better.

Well my practise session last week went really well, and reading the script from my note taking device seemed to work much better than I previously thought. I have not got the recording from last week yet, but will include it on this website when it arrives. The feedback from both the senior, and show producers was really good, they said that I sounded very natural but needed to remember to back announce songs.

I felt that while this was justified, I followed the script that was given to me but I will remember this in future, and will include idents and back announcement of songs. Tomorrow I am presenting with Steven Owens on Exposure Brunch, and the news tomorrow afternoon so it’s an early start for me. I will update you on how it all goes. As usual feel free to comment, and please support our student radio station by visiting:
www.exposureradio.org.

Today went really well. I had some great feedback, and will blog again soon when I have got all the comments from the producer together.

Well those who are not radio students at the University of Glamorgan may have read the above title in confusion. Exposure radio is a radio station that is set up by all the radio students for their fellow students, staff of the University and for anyone to listen too online. It is an opportunity for us to take the skills that we have and are being taught, and put them in to practice. As well as the presentation skills, this will help us to understand how timing can be absolutely crucial in a live radio scenario.

I will post the link at the end of my blog and I hope that you will all tune in and support our radio station.

Tomorrow I am going in to present a show that is almost like a rehearsal. It’s a time to iron out any problems that we might have. One of my major concerns is that my Pac Mate, which is a Braille note taker, at times, only reads half lines. My worry is that it will affect my delivery of the script. In a pre-record, this is not a problem as it can all be edited to sound natural, however, in a live situation, this is obviously not possible. If anyone has experience of Braille note takers or you just have a suggestion, then I would love to hear from you. My mum Beverley, who is my support assistant, is currently transcribing the script in to a format that is accessible to me. Once this has been achieved I will try and copy from the computer on to my note taker. If I am not able to do this, then I will type the script manually in to the note taker. I will write again tomorrow evening about how the show goes.
As promised that link is:

http://www.exposureradio.org

A different take is a series of radio shows broadcast on Radio Cardiff. Each week a different group of people present with a different theme. Chris, Russ, Adam and I were the four presenters for this week. All four of us have very different interests, and for the programme, we decided to combine our interests and create a chart the year style show. I am interested in news, Adam in sport and Chris in music. Russ decided to try and find quirky news stories as you will see when you listen to the show. Please note that the show will be uploaded once we have resolved a few technical problems, please check back soon to listen to the show. In order to keep it local, we decided that we would keep as many of the stories about Wales and about Cardiff.

Before the broadcast, the other students and I talked about the programme and what we would like the listeners to gain from the programme. We decided that as we all have differing skills we would use them. We wanted to create a blend of news, sport and music as well as some interesting things from around Cardiff. We also played the number 1 hits from this year as well as some other songs that may not be number 1, but were very well known.

Here is a list of the stories that I covered:

The EastEnders baby swap and cot death story
Cardiff is one of the least environmentally friendly cities
The Welsh referendum
The royal wedding
The great Welsh Beer and Cider festival
The riots
Ten year anniversary of 9/11
Mining accident in Swansea
And the Michael Jackson Tribute concert

I was unable to produce the show but I was fully involved in all the decision making of the programme. From my experience in live broadcast and my experiences in pre-recorded shows, I feel that I am better at live broadcasting as I sound less stilted. I love the pressure that comes with live broadcasting. In Cardiff Radio, there is an hourly news and adverts as well as adverts half hourly. Everything you want in a programme, has to fit in with that time scale. You have to know when you can do a story or a song, or where it is better to either cancel or push the item back until after the break.

As a blind person I translate my scripts from print in to Braille, by using an embosser. I also use a Braille note taking device which, when typed in to, will translate directly in to Braille, meaning that I can edit the script, and easily get a paper copy for the live show.

Tune in to www.cardiffradio.org tomorrow between 3 and 5 UK time for my radio debut. I’ll blog after the show and let you know how it went.

Picturesque Street is a Radio 4 documentary that was produced in October this year. I wrote this blog at the time, but as I’ve only just started up the website, I thought I would post it here as well.

Unfortunately, I did not understand the point of this programme. I believe that the documentary maker was trying to portray how different Russia is today compared to its difficult past. He was trying to show that elements of that communist state still exist between the rich and the poor, those who understand what needs to happen to make Russia a better place and those who do not. The presenter sometimes sounded as if he were reading from a script and did not sound natural at all. The sound effects were used really well and he did use a mixture of people to try and convey his point. I felt that the presenter was more of a narrator than a journalist asking questions. It would have been better to actually hear him interview people rather than something along the lines of “I asked … what they thought of …”

I felt that pitching this programme for Radio 4 was a really good option. I do not believe that this programme would have worked for a Radio one audience. It may also have been a good programme for the world service.