(Also posted @ GeorgeMillerDJ)
Yesterday I spent a full THREE hours live on Radio Sonar (.co.uk)! That’s a full normal shift you’d be on if you were on a real radio station.
And double what the average time you spend on a show on the uni station.
It was a good thing to do and get used to. If I want to get a real job on a real station, I need to be used to spending three hours plus in the studio, if not more; Sometimes new additions to stations get put on the graveyard 1-6am slot. That’s a five hour slot on air.
Yesterday, I was joined on air by Andrew, someone on my course, and as we only found out we would be staying the extra hour and a half less than an hour into the original slot, we decided to research into what the show we were covering would have done.
It was good to be able to get experience in researching and coming up with content for your show. Because no one wants to just listen to music, news and adverts, with you introducing them. You’ve got to come up with stuff. What you did in the last 24hours, things the listeners would find interesting and useful, to provoke interaction and such.
I should do it for my own show more, really. I always think about making a clock (technical term for dividing up how each of your hours are going to look. It should be fairly easy, considering it’s an hour and a half a week.
But the thing with Radio Sonar, is they only have a 2 minute news bulletin (with 10sec intro and outro) and a 20 advert each hour that we can’t control. The other 57 minutes is literally ours to sort. On a real station, you’ll have that, plus two or three 2/3min advert breaks every 15 mins or so, plus at peak times maybe a news bulletin on the half hour, and don’t forget traffic and weather reports, too!
That takes up a lot of the time on the clock, once you put in 3 or 4 tracks in between that doesn’t leave long to fill with your own stuff.
On radio sonar, you might average 20 songs per hour. On a real station, it’s more like 10-15.
And it’s a little pointless having a travel bulletin, when you’re an online-only station.
Written by idlebacon
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