For our LYME show on the 22nd January, I took the role as BA, I was excited yet nervous for my role within the team as I had never experienced BA’ing before and knew very little of how to use the sound desk, set up microphones and take levels. As a group we were at a disadvantage from the start (as previously mentioned) one of our group members could not get back to Lincoln before the day of the show, therefore Molly who took role as the second presenter, also had to step in and take on Darleen’s role as Multi Platform also. We were not only at a disadvantage by having 4 members of the group instead of 5 but we also had less time to plan the show than the LYME groups previously due to the our show being so close after the Christmas break. We had roughly a week and a half to prepare the show together, including gathering interviews, creating running orders and writing scripts etc.
Roughly 9 or 10 days before the show, we met to begin brainstorming ideas and coming up content we could use effectively and be ready to use on the show in a number of days. During this time an idea came across for our group to conduct a Live Radio Drama, on the show. We wanted to try something no other group had tried to do before so we went about looking for a script we could use.
We began to contact live guests for the show, but this proved difficult due to the time restriction we had to get the guests. As a group we contacted University drama and script lecturers as well as students.
Other problems we faced during the show, was finding rehearsal time, as I had little experience as BA, I originally wanted several sessions on the BA desk to learn what I needed to do on the day, however with time restriction, I had about 2 hours in total to learn all I needed to managed the desk. We had also managed to get a live phone interview with a former University Of Lincoln graduate and I was quite nervous to have complete control over that aspect despite having very little experience.
Overall I believe the show went very well, and my role as BA on the day turned out to be much better than I thought it would be, in regards to practice sessions on the BA desk beforehand. We all as a group agreed that the live drama aspect was the most stressful part of the show, yet this part was the best day of the show as we had pulled off something that hadn’t been done before. My initial worries of the live phone interview went well, and with guidance from the Siren FM team and my producer I managed to control the sound desk well, turning the miss on/off at the right time and playing certain clips at the correct time also making the show sound very professional. The only problem that occurred on the day was that when we were taking guests levels I accidently turned their microphone on when the music was playing. However I managed to get past this problem as was notified of my problem quite quickly and they had not talked in the time I had their microphone on.
Problems occurred during the Multi Platform section of our show, as although Molly had access to the LYME twitter and facebook throughout the process, she couldn’t seem to log on to the website to log our planning process of the show. She managed to fix the problem eventually, however during this time, I offered to submit pieces of work to the website on my name (as I could log on) to make sure the website had enough content on it throughout.
Feedback from other group members:
I think the show worked because of the level of creativity in it – we moved away from the standard question and answer format and included a live radio drama, this was unique and in many ways I think it made our Lend Me Your Ears interesting and engaging (Vikie Bennion – Main Presenter)
I think that Lend me your ears worked really well as it offered us first hand experience of what’s involved in producing a radio show from start to finish. And allowed us to be creative with the topics given. By giving us this experience we now understand the pressure and amount of work that is involved in making a radio show, which I feel we could not have learnt through a lecture. (Molly Hemsley – Second Presenter/Multi Media)