TV Forum Watch News and Information Board

[Pete]

Yeah, that's really helpful![/sarcasm] Name-calling is so much easier than you know actually discussing anything. Is it any wonder the internet has become a farce, when the rules of the kids playground seem to be the only thing guiding people?

shut up cityprick

Thank you Pete for proving my point.

I'm finding you very tedious.

[Martin Phillp]

Is Metro becoming a dumping ground for people banned from other forums then?

He only started posting on here when TopCat 'informed' him about the discussion we had on here about his recent behaviour on TVF.

[robschneider]

This is actually more disturbing than some of his pissed-up YouTube rants.

[dosxuk]

One of my previous jobs was based in the same building as them, so I'm very aware of how they operate, and the people involved. They pride themselves on giving people who otherwise would never get into radio a chance to do so.

Well, that's what community radio is there to do. Don't forget, it was originally called "Access Radio", and as a sector, the task of community radio stations is to give people who wouldn't get on BBC or commercial local radio a chance to produce radio shows. There's been some interesting comedy shows and documentaries as well as music programmes produced because of community radio, programmes that would not be done by the BBC or commercial radio

The thing is, in this case, they're not giving the opportunity to people who want to be involved in radio...

My suspicion is that many of those people wouldn't get into radio because they either don't want to, or don't have the ability to learn the skills to do so.

Your suspicion would be incorrect on both counts. If they didn't want to do radio, they wouldn't volunteer in the first place, and I've seen people who knew nothing about radio, learn about it, and get onto BBC and commercial radio stations. If you're interested enough in something, you'll learn whatever you can about it.

The majority of their volunteers do their two weeks, then are never seen or heard of again. They are people who are required to spend two weeks in work, and choose the station because they think it'll be easy. These are not people being given a chance to do something they love. However, they are a major source of income for the station.

Sheffield is one of the largest University cities in the UK - over 50,000 students, yet they have no integration with either university, and don't give them any coverage. Both universities have media courses, and one has an award winning student media team, yet there's nothing done to forge a relationship and allow the students to get some real experience, or to produce content aimed at them, which is otherwise overlooked by the commercial / BBC alternatives. Example in case - Sheffield Varsity - 30+ different sports competed between the two universities, the final event, which co-incidentally holds the record for the highest attendance of university ice hockey sport outside the US, gets zero coverage. They've been approached about taking the universities' coverage (both radio and TV) and turned it down because they're not interested in that sort of thing.

The other couple of community radio stations around here all give me the same impression as them - it's radio produced* by people who want to produce radio, not radio produced for an audience, and without the people who *can* produce radio - because they've gone and got jobs doing what they love.

* by produced, I mean "thrown together"

There's no reason that someone who wants to produce radio, isn't producing it for an audience. Just because you might not be aware of the audience for it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I agree that producing good radio is a skill, and sadly it is a skill that no longer seems to be taught anywhere, because of things like computerised music selection, which have taken most of the skill out of it.

I'm not referring to a particular audience, I'm referring to *any* audience. The amount of programming put together on the day, by the presenter and his mate, with a rough idea of what's happening that day and the feedback from the 10 people who listened last week is ridiculous. There's no research, there's no planning, there's no idea of who they're actually making the programme for. All they are doing is making a radio programme, because they like making radio, and they're volunteers anyway, so it doesn't matter if things go wrong, don't work out or sound terrible, because they're not getting paid for it and the listeners should take that into account.

When you talk about not providing a scores service for local teams, because the BBC do that, you completely summarise my issue with community radio. You absolutely should be providing local sports updates. By playing the "well they do that, so we shouldn't" card you alienate your listeners, and you make worse programmes. How many more people would listen if not only could they hear from a local voice, but also get updates on how the local teams are performing? Far more than you'd put off by including a little bit of sports news I'd imagine.

Far more important than just being a local voice, is making programming that appeals to the local listeners. And I'm yet to hear a community station that achieves that consistently enough to make it worthwhile tuning in on a whim.

[Martin Phillp]

I can understand a rural community station which doesn't have a commercial station providing local information (those rural stations in Scotland are essential), but we live in an age where I get more information through local websites than on radio, which leaves a station to either provide a niche product, such as super serving an ethnic minority group or alternative formats which the BBC or commercial radio don't provide.

[cityprod]

This is actually more disturbing than some of his pissed-up YouTube rants.

You know, I'd be quite interested to find out how my TouTube commentaries would be "pissed up" considering that I don't drink alcohol.

[cityprod]

I'm not referring to a particular audience, I'm referring to *any* audience. The amount of programming put together on the day, by the presenter and his mate, with a rough idea of what's happening that day and the feedback from the 10 people who listened last week is ridiculous. There's no research, there's no planning, there's no idea of who they're actually making the programme for. All they are doing is making a radio programme, because they like making radio, and they're volunteers anyway, so it doesn't matter if things go wrong, don't work out or sound terrible, because they're not getting paid for it and the listeners should take that into account.

I think at best you're being somewhat inaccurate, and at worst, unkind to a lot of these people. I won't deny that it happens to some degree but based on what I know of community radio around Cornwall, the majority of programmes do have a lot of preparation and pre-production done. Now, there are times when you throw some of that away because of something that's happened, and you have to wing parts of your show, but that's part and parcel of doing live radio.

When you talk about not providing a scores service for local teams, because the BBC do that, you completely summarise my issue with community radio. You absolutely should be providing local sports updates. By playing the "well they do that, so we shouldn't" card you alienate your listeners, and you make worse programmes. How many more people would listen if not only could they hear from a local voice, but also get updates on how the local teams are performing? Far more than you'd put off by including a little bit of sports news I'd imagine.

I'm sorry but at this point, you're talking rubbish. If that was an issue at all, commercial radio would not have predominantly stopped covering local sport. It's more than that though. For us as a community station, we do need to promote that these events are happening and encourage peeople to attend them, but covering them on the community station would possibly do more damage than good. We need to be seen to be supporting the community, promoting community events and encourgaing community interaction, and quite honestly, if we can get more people to go to the game, rather than hear updates of it on our station, it will be far better for the community at large. Let's not forget that each of these clubs are minnows in the sports world and they need to get as much money as they can from gate receipts and concessions, so better for us to promote the matches in advance and encourage people to go, rather than cover the events.

Sports shows are a good thing to do, but usually in advance of the action, rather than covering it directly. Besides which, in an area like Falmouth/Penryn, you have a number of different clubs to cover. Falmouth Town FC are in the South West Peninsula League Premier Division, whilst Penryn Athletic are in Division 1 West, plus of course you've got neighbouring Truro City, who are in National League South. Plus you've got local rugby teams in Falmouth & Stithians, so every week, as well as a presenter, we'd need at least 5 volunteer reporters or stringers to cover each team, no matter where they go, and whilst for most teams that's only as far as Tiverton Town, which is far enough, the stringer covering Truro City would need to be able travel right across the Southern half of England to cover the team. That's a helluva lot to ask a volunteer to do.

Far more important than just being a local voice, is making programming that appeals to the local listeners. And I'm yet to hear a community station that achieves that consistently enough to make it worthwhile tuning in on a whim.

What do you mean by consistently enough? Should every hour sound the same musically, be computer programmed and tightly formatted like commercial radio is? I don't think that helps us. I know some stations do, but I don't think it makes communtiy radio that distinctive, if we do that. Better for us to have greater variety of musical styles in different programmes, rather than try to blend it all together into a weird musical sludge.

[cityprod]

I can understand a rural community station which doesn't have a commercial station providing local information (those rural stations in Scotland are essential), but we live in an age where I get more information through local websites than on radio, which leaves a station to either provide a niche product, such as super serving an ethnic minority group or alternative formats which the BBC or commercial radio don't provide.

Yes, but that is London and under 35's mainly.

Our area might have a significant student population, but it's dwarfed by the percentage of older people living in the community. But more than that, local media are still people's primary source of information around here. Local newspapers and local radio do well around here still. Whilst the younger end of the market might favour local websites more, most local websites for Cornwall have some connection still to the local media companies.

Overall, it makes sense to provide local information on a community station during the daytime hours. The old radio 1 mantra of "ratings by day, credibility by night" makes a lot of sense. Do programming with popular, well known music during the daytime, and have the schedule be more eclectic at evenings and weekends. It seems to work.

[robschneider]

I'm so bored.

[Alexia]

Then please fuck off.

[robschneider]

Then please fuck off.

You've such a pleasant way with words.