WORK: Bath FM - Day 5

I sat in on Paul’s show again, this time I spent more time analysing the show and it’s running order and asked a few more questions. He obviously really enjoys presenting the show and when the question came up of whether he would ever leave the show to focus on managing the stations he said it was unlikely, unless of course Pat Sharp offered to take over!

At around 6:30 Paul reads the headlines of national papers. Luckily there is a website that has this information for him to read out which saves him from having to buy ten newspapers every morning and leaf through them.

Every hour of his show he reads the local news, a traffic update and reads from the local diary, which are some local events that have been emailed to the station. I think the local diary is vital for the stations community-friendly image.

The national news is read during peak hours like 8am-9am where the listenership is highest because of people driving to work or dropping their kids to school.

As part of their programming policy Paul’s show contains a local themed feature every hour. These features are:-

Where am I? – A location in Bath is described and the listeners have to guess where the location is.

Bath’s Big Vote – A topic that affects the local community is open for listeners to call in and share their thoughts. An example of this was when there was a possibility of the Bath rugby grounds to relocate; there was a huge response to this.

Bath FM Coffee Break – 15 minutes of back-to-back music with features from local sponsors.

Paul also uploaded the Marmaduke’s track onto the companies’ FTP site so that the track could be added to the companies playlist. While uploading the song he had to quickly run from Studio 2 to Studio 1 as the song playing on air was finishing.

After that I spent time watching Paul record the Vinyl Countdown idents by editing the background song with the pre-record presenter voice over. This was done so that it was available in time for the Vinyl Countdown show on the weekend.

I was extremely happy with my experience at Bath FM, the work environment is good, everyone who works there is very friendly and I would love if I had the chance to work with any of the people I met there again. I am now more interested in management either in a business setting or potentially utilising the skills I have observed and using them as a producer for television or film, which is another role I'm interested in. I think it's a shame I'm not more interested in actually managing for radio. I am very passionate about music however I listen to wealth of different styles of music and bands that usually aren't commercially successful. I think from this experience I have learnt that Radio is a business and having commercially listenable music that appeals to people is what drives the business. I think that there isn't really a place for more underground types of music to be as successful as a company like Bath FM, however I would be very interested in the programming and content management side of a radio station that caters to a more niche market, if this oppurtunity ever arises I think what I've learnt from Paul will definitely come in handy.

WORK: Bath FM - Day 4

Today Paul and I drove up to Swindon as there was a problem with the offices broadband connection which needed to get fixed, mainly because the presenters needed the internet for aid them with their shows. This was especially important with the Bank Holiday weekend approaching where there would be no office staff at all apart from the presenters and therefore no-one to help if they had any problems.

Paul issued the studios with broadband dongles, which worked fine (eventually) and will hopefully hold out till the end of the bank holiday at least. The next task on the agenda was to visit the new Swindon offices with builders to arrange soundproofing the offices to move the studios into. The empty studio space looked good and both office spaces seemed big enough for two studios.

I think one of the best experiences of the day was meeting the builders who knew exactly what they were doing and were completely up for the job even though the work had to be done really soon. The builder Paul originally consulted gave him a high price quote and so he consulted his Uncle and Cousin to do the job, which they seemed more than happy to help with. Paul obviously knew a great deal about construction and I’m not sure if this came form working with his Uncle previously or perhaps his farming background but I thought it was extremely helpful for him to understand the in’s and out’s of construction and I wondered if I was ever to be a manager if I would need to have similar knowledge as construction is something I know absolutely nothing about. Paul seemed sceptical about whether it was possible to get the studios built in time before their eviction date from the current Swindon office. Both his uncle and cousin replied at numerous times “nothing’s impossible” which such certainty that I now consider it fact.

Paul's job seems extremely hectic, he could have a day planned but have to drop it at a moments notice to tend to emergencies like the Broadband incident today. I think one of Paul's best qualities is his ability to remain calm in highly stressful times. I think his job is exciting as he always has something to do which is the kind of job that suits me. I think that if I had the kind of knowledge and experience that Paul has with Radio for Television or Film Production that I myself would be interested in setting up a production company as it seems to be very fulfilling to work on a project like Southwest Radio and watching your own company grow and flourish seems exciting. I can tell Paul does this job for his love of Radio and I think his passion for the medium is what makes him a good manager.

WORK: Bath FM - Day 3

Today Paul was preparing for a board meeting so couldn’t do his morning show again. Once again Oliver filled in for him. Our day was cut short because of the meeting however Paul managed to fit in an informative talk as we looked over the groups programming policy. As the document is confidential and contains information sensitive to the company I will not be reprinting any of the contents.

WORK: Bath FM - Day 2

I had an early start with Paul today and sat it on the breakfast show, which he presents, I also got to meet Steve who does the early morning breakfast show.

What’s notable about watching someone on the air on the radio is the need for some precise timing as Paul had to often backtime what songs were being played before certain segments like the news, which starts one second after the hour. Paul stays true to his companies catchphrase "keeping it local" by hosting a competition, "Where am I?" Where he describes a nearby location and the listeners have to call in to guess the location. There is a definite sense of community in the station as most of their competitions have prizes to local shows like the Drive-Thru screening of Grease and the Katy Setterfield concert who is a Dusty Springfield tribute act. Paul also supports the Bath Comedy Festival by giving information on the upcoming gigs and plugs the upcoming Joke-off between himself and fellow presenter Kate Constance.

After the show Paul dealt with invoices for a while and answered some emails before launching my favourite part of the day: Listening to new music. I learnt that invoices usually need to be checked by Paul before going to Head Office to get processed.


We listened to new singles to see which he would choose to potentially get played on air. The artists included U2, EG, Daniel Merriweather, Kelly Clarkson and Marmaduke Duke and I found it pretty exciting as he was getting early listens to new singles.

He decided which songs would go on his A or B list for this week and possibly the following week and which songs would not be played at all.

He had to update the playlist for the other station programmers to see as well as the band's publishers.

We spoke about the PRS, I was curious to find out how artists got paid for their music being played on air. He explained that PRS take a percentage of the companies’ annual gross for playing copyright music.

Paul took calls from the manager/promoter of a band who had sent him a promo CD for the band Grasshouse (or something like that). He listened to it while still on the phone to the manager, which I thought was extremely courteous, he even admitted there was a chance of the band getting some airtime since he liked the song. A lot of the choices Paul makes regarding the music depend solely on the song and whether its good or not, it seems that even being a big name doesn’t secure you airtime as we discussed with Steve that some of the songs by artists like Pink and Justin Timberlake weren’t suitable for the stations image, however they do have some songs that they will play because the audience like it like Justin Timberlake's "Senorita".

Most of what he did today was regarding the radio side of things; he also spoke with his sales department about looking for weather sponsorship. It's a shame I couldn't spend more time with the Sales team as they seemed like nice guys and I think that knowing about Sales and having some experience with it would be vital for business management.

EVENT: Last lesson before Easter Break

The last session before Easter had us really making sure that the event would work out. There were a lot of loose ends to tie and we needed to go over our proposed plans with a fine-toothed comb.

Unfortunately Chris and Balve weren’t able to make the meeting but Balve did email me the questionnaire he was supposed to do. This questionnaire is to be given to the visiting students at the end of the event as a way of evaluating the experience. The floor plan from Chris was absent but we’re certain that the green screen equipment will be able to fit in Newton G08.

We went through the event blow by blow making sure that everything was covered. Some of the big problems we needed to sort out included things like

- How we were going to split the students into two groups
- We needed to arrange for the CRB ambassadors to meet at a specific time
- Who was going to be present at the icebreaker/introduction
- Who was going to be in charge of creating name badges
- What the running order was for each room/activity
- Which areas we were going to take the students for the tour
- How many groups we would do for the tour and how many students would be in each group

One of the problems we encountered was that Balve and Jake didn’t have any work experience over Easter and so wouldn’t be able to show any profiles in the work experience room. We decided that Balve could talk about his experience at the Jonathan Ross show and Jake could talk about script writing and networking in Hollywood.

We also decided to drop teaching sound in the Green screen room so Chris could help Will set up and teach lighting instead, since there would be two lighting kits now I think this would be appropriate as the job would be too big for one person.

We were also told that we would be provided with Bath Spa polo shirts for the event by Steve May, Head of Creative Studies.

Some of the other tasks we had to do during the day were to arrange for the chairs to be removed from Room G08 during the event. Inform the Uni of the Media event, which was sent out by email (so now everyone with a Bath Spa email account knows my mobile number).

One thing that did cross my mind was that if we had taken this approach to the event from the beginning then it would have probably gone a lot smoother, hopefully people doing this course in the following years might read this and decide to REALLY organise their events and that way make it more successful.

EVENT: Green Screen Demo

I arranged a Green Screen demo upstairs in the Gatehouse so that we could learn enough about the equipment to be able to teach to others (particularly the the Vision Mixer and Lighting set up). Just before the actual demo Richard informed me that I hadn't booked out a monitor for the vision mixer for the event which was a rookie mistake as I hoped the Vision Mixer would come with some sort of screen. Shows how much I know about modern technology!

Here's the Edirol V-4 Vision Mixer:-


As the team set up the equipment I took notes and made a floor plan so that we could easily replicate the set-up for the event.

Naomi, our technical demonstrator, was very helpful with setting up the green screen explaining things like the importance of making sure the green material was as flat and stretched as possible and that we set up the lighting in a way that eliminated shadows completely. At this point it became clear that we would need to use two lighting kits, one to light the green screen and one to light the subject.

One of the only problems that was encountered was connecting up the vision mixer to the widescreen tv in the gatehouse. at first we didn't have the correct cable but once we realised which cable was needed (S-Video to Component) we were able to get the imagery shown on screen. This caused a bigger problem: The image coming from the laptop was extremely pixelated and no matter how much we manipulated the laptops resolution the images still looked extremely blocky.

The results looked like this:
There is still an obvious green outline around me!

I spoke to Richard who assured me that because the widescreen television was HD the imagery wouldn't be able to match a suitable quality and he expects that the monitor we use for the rehearsal will provide a sharper image output.

I thought that the demo went well apart from the problems with image quality which seemed to get the team down a bit. Hopefully the monitor we use gives a better image.

I will have to type up my notes about lighting for Will and get some photocopies of my (extremely bad) floor plan:

WORK: Bath FM - Day 1

When I first got to Bath FM and met Paul Roberts it’s striking how energetic he is, which I think is vital for a 28yr old who is busy running 5 different radio stations; Bath FM, Brunel FM, 3TR FM and 2 other stations both called Quaywest FM.

Paul worked with the previous owners of the stations, Laser, and when the company dissolved this gave him the oppurtunity to make bids for the companies. Since October 2008 he has been managing these stations and attempting to improve on how they were run previously and from what I can tell he’s doing a good job of it.

He gave me a tour of Bath FM, which is a smallish building, but bigger than the previous stations I’ve visited (BBC Bristol and Bath University Radio). The staff consisted of a small Sales team and a few presenters. One of the big changes that Paul pointed out was having more shows throughout the day. Bath FM had previously been mainly automated music with a maximum of two shows per day.

Since Paul was raving to Prodigy live at Cardiff the previous night he was off for his usual morning show from 6:30-10:00, which was filled in by Oliver Head who usually works at Brunel FM in Swindon. After a brief chat with Paul we decided the best thing for me to do was to work shadow him as he does his job, as I have no experience or knowledge of management or business, let alone the management side of Radio. I feel like I’m lucky that Paul’s belief is that business is business. I was glad he wasn’t offended that I’m not primarily interested in radio station management, just management as a whole. I imagine other people being quite sensitive about this and thinkning that taking me on for work experience would be a waste of time.

We spent the day touring two of the five radio stations, Brunel FM and 3TR FM which gave me an oppurtunity to shoot some material for the video profile we need to make.

We arrived at Brunel FM where the front of the building is under construction. The studios were a lot nicer than Bath FM and once again I met a team of great people. The general work atmosphere throughout is great and everyone I met seemed very easy going and positive, it seems like a great environment to work in apart from the construction going on at the front. Paul spent some time sorting out the upcoming Bank Holiday, making sure there were staff and presenters on hand since it seemed to take him by surprise.

We visited 3TR FM next which has the biggest office space out of all three of the stations, the team once again were nice to talk to, one of the things that seemed to crop up at both Brunel and 3TR was the stations’ use of Twitter to post news updates.

A lot of Paul’s day seems to be dealing with problems that crop up, which range from things like dealing with BT after being sent a bill for a phone they don’t use to dealing with the press about a court case that had previously ended. He seems like a compassionate manager who places great importance in his staff and seems to get along with all of them well.

I feel like I’m learning a lot from him about how to effectively run radio stations, as he seems to be saving money, bringing in advertisers, and producing great radio all by keeping a local community-friendly image which the surrounding areas lack from radio.