On Monday, Group 3 went to 3RRR and went live to air for the first time on Room with a View. For our first show, I was a presenter, so I was therefore rather nervous before the show.
I felt as though our preparation for the show had been pretty strong. We added a good amount of detail to our run sheet, and we had multiple back ups of our songs, interviews and other recorded materials ready to go. Unfortunately we did have to settle with two pre-recorded interviews and one live, rather than the other way around, however, both of our pre-recorded interviews were engaging and the interviewees were very passionate about their causes. During our preparation, we did have a last minute issue with our live interview. The night before our show, we were told our live interviewee may not be able to make it, which did cause some momentary panic. Thankfully, he was able to come in and complete the interview. Our social media pages before the show were also looking very well prepared and informative.
Going live to air is a very different experience when compared to the practising we have done previously. The little things, like having to jump into a studio that we had not used before, and only having a few minutes to do so was definitely a little daunting.
As a whole, considering it was our first show, I feel as though we were relatively successful. We were able to play all of our content while also sticking pretty close to our time estimates. We also followed the run sheet pretty well, and I felt as though most of our transitions and talking breaks were well done.
I was pleased with the way our live interview went. I feel as though Charlie Cooper from Qheadspace was a great live interview, as he was passionate about what he was speaking about. I felt that our interviewers were also very good at listening and engaging with what he was saying, rather than simply giving generic responses to his answers. The one issue, however, was that we did begin to lose time, and did unfortunately have to cut out one question. While I think we did hide this pretty well, you are able to tell by my response to the question before that I did want to rush things along.
While the show did go pretty well, there were many things that could have been done better, and that we need to work on for the next show.
The first is surrounding language warnings for tracks. We were unsure whether we needed to include a language warning for the songs we chose that included swearing. This meant that, for the first song, our language warning was relatively clunky and awkward, and our other songs did not feature one at all. For our second show, we need to ask if they are necessary, and if they are, work out a way to include them before our tracks in a way that is smooth and barely noticed.
Most of our transitions from songs to the hosts and to the pre-recorded materials were relatively smooth, although some songs could have done with being faded in or out earlier. Our first pre-recorded interview appeared to have a slight delay, which created slight dead-air between the presenters speaking and the actual interview.
Our worst situations with dead air, and probably the biggest issues with the show came when we attempted to play our sponsorship announcements. For some reason, when we faded from the hosts to the sponsorship announcements, they wouldn’t play, which is something we were not prepared for. Thankfully, multiple people from 3RRR entered the studio afterwards to show us how to fix it and re-assure us that it was in fact a computer glitch that does happen sometimes, and was not our fault. Despite this, we did have two long stretches of dead air. In our demo show, we had an issue with one of the songs not playing, so we quickly threw back to the hosts to cover the air and get the song going again. Because this had happened in the demo, we were prepared and knew to do this again. While we should have probably thrown to the hosts sooner, when the microphones were turned back on, we were able to speak about the interview coming up and allow our panel operator and producer to get prepared. The second time, the panel operator just threw to the cued up song and changed the order slightly of our run sheet to cover up the silence while the issue with the sponsorships was fixed. We now know to be weary of this issue for our next show, and potentially come up with a plan for covering up dead air.
Overall, I am very proud of our groups effort. We know what things worked the best in our first show, and some things to look out for and improve on for our next show. I am also very proud of my own personal effort. I was very nervous to be on radio, as I had never done it before and was unsure, despite all the preparation, what to expect. I will admit, I was very nervous through the first introduction to the show, which I can hear when listening back on the show myself. However, I did become more comfortable over the duration, and ended up having a great time. If I ever get the chance to be live on radio again, I will work on speaking more confidently, and will work on adding further to my hosting by improvising a little more when I speak to make myself sound more natural, while also allowing the audience to engage with me further.
In terms of Room With a View, I am excited to try out a new role in the radio group, one that will most likely have me being more involved with the actual preparation of the show. With a role potentially as a co-producer, or the person who works on the social media side, I hope to learn more about planning and arranging a radio show and how to create awareness for it.
Bring on our second show!
Ps. If you’d like to listen to Group 3’s first show, it can be found at the below Soundcloud link with my own personal annotations!