Press here for freedom?

China has tightened its control on the foreign journalist.  Banning them from a shopping centre in Beijing that was mentioned in a blog about peaceful protests.  The interesting thing for the ruling Chinese Communist Party to comprehend is just who is a journalist these days?

In times past you could always spot a journalist, they were lugging a great big tape recorder or had a camera crew with them or were desperate to find a working phone booth to file their story back to the newspaper.

Now everyone with a smart phone is a journalist.  With a phone you can take high res photos, HD movies, record good quality sound and be a first hand witness to any event however momentous however banal. You do not need a phone booth just an internet connection to file a story.  I think that the Chinese authorities will face the same inability to 'control' the media, as Hosni Mubarak or Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Why? Because everybody is carrying the 'media' around in their pocket right now.

Listen with mother

I learned to listen to the the radio with my mother, sounds very middle class but somewhere after the BBC News and before Woman's Hour the Home Service (Radio 4) would put out Listen With Mother a rather middle class cosy view of a child's world with suitable stories and inane rhyme.

Radio today has turned its back on our children with one DAB station - Fun Kids and a half-arsed bit of Radio 7 called Big Toe.  The kids will not care though, they have plenty of media diversions, from computer games - now the biggest part of the UK entertainment industry to scores of TV channels beaming shows just for them, and should they get bored of all that there is plenty of stuff on iTunes for them to download.

The trouble is, the kids of today are tomorrows radio listeners and if we don't get 'em young they will never get into the habit of listening.  I have just finished working on a kids series for radio.  'Professor Hallux builds a body' 14x 8-10min episodes for Fun Kids and the Wellcome Trust, brilliantly written not by me but I produced the sound design and did nearly all of the post-production, save one episode.

To compete with the iPod generation a kids radio show has to have high production values, gone are the days when a child will happily listen to some old fart singing 'Five Currant Buns' which seemed to come round with annoying regularity on 'Listen With Mother'

So my plea to the radio industry is don't forget the kids because in about ten years time they may come back and bite you on the bottom.

End of the peer

The great unwashed want to have a say in your radio station.  I know it's ghastly and there was a time when the only way 'they' could interact with your radio shows was to call  - and you could ignore them, or they had to write, usually on scraps of paper in green ink which you could file in the waste paper basket.  Now they Facebook, twitter, text and speed dial until you eventually have to pick up the call.

So just what's going on? Here's an interesting quote from my old boss Steve Parkinson talking about the Kiss audience: "The big picture is they expect entertainment on demand, on multiple platforms, and they want to interact with their peers and favourite DJs in real time on mobile, by instant message and social media."

That's an awful lot of extra work. Providing on demand and interaction requires clever software and merging your IT content producers with your DJ's or Radio Producers.  BUT is it worth it? I think a better question is can a business afford not to travel the two-way street where your listeners or customers get a chance to have their say.

Your job is to get that interactivity to work and departments to synergise with each other. I have been busy creating a series of Podcasts/Downloads they have their own web page, podcast page, twitter, facebook fan page, You Tube Channel and you can subscribe to them on iTunes.  It's the future of your next piece of audio but it has increased our workload more than threefold.

Interview Technique

The perfect interview, preparation is everything.  Here are some top tips. 

1: Find out about your subject most people have some kind of internet footprint.  Also ask yourself what you want from the interview and what questions you need to ask to get what you want?

2: At the interview a bit of chit chat helps you both establish a rapport.  Give them an idea of the area you will be interviewing them about, how many questions and how long the interview will be.

3: Get the microphone close to them, do not interview in an adversarial position you are better sitting beside your victim that way it doesn't appear that you are shoving a mic in their face but you can still get close.

4: What, who, where, when, why and how are the key words to start your questions.  Avoid closed questions - the ones that get you just a yes or no.

5: Listen, your guest might actually have answered your next question and you sound a pratt asking it and getting the answer, 'well as I have already said.'

6: Noddy but no Big Ears, nod encouragement rather than say 'yes' or 'ah huh'

7: I always get my guest to say on the recording who they are and the title they hold, that way, fewer mistakes.

8. Shake rattle and roll: Hold the mic steady clamp the lead between your hand and the body of the mic, and remember to return the mic back to you if you want to keep your questions in.

9.  Take Two: If you think that you haven't got what you want from your interviewee - don't be afraid to ask the questions again, help them by telling them what you would like them to say. (This doesn't mean putting words in their mouth)

10. Before you go, check the interview has recorded.

Good News

A top 10 guide to making a great news piece.

1 What's the story? Create one sentence that clearly explains what the story is about.  That's your starting point.

2 Language: Simple conversational words how you would speak to someone not how you would write to somebody.

3 Get out and about: A bit of atmos is great. Beware of too much noise drowning out you and your interviewee.

4 Short and shorter: Cut it down and if you can cut it again. Less is always more.

5 Mix it up: More voices in quick succession, male and female voices keep interest rather than some boring old sod droning on.

6 Vox Pops: Only if they are good and relevant to the story.  Sometimes VoxPops are overdone (particularly by the BBC) they can be the opinion of a handful of people in west London (usually) and not represent your story or the people actually involved in it.

8 Heart of the story:  Who is actually involved speak to them even if its on the phone.  You want the mother of the dead child not the spokesman from a bereavement charity.

9 Music and Effects: Never gratuitously but appropriate music and some effects can work.  No treading over vocals though it ALWAYS sounds ugly.

10 THE END: As they said in The Truman Show - how will it end? How will your piece end is it going to be a question? A summing up? Or a little cheesy play on words? Or a future line on what may happen to your story?

Podtastic

A few rules for creating a good audio Podcast:
1. Keep it short - no more than 20 mins
2. If you have music and FX turn your recording into 128K 44.1 Stereo if it is just speech 64K mono 44.1 is fine.
3. Treat like a professional piece of audio. We have heard far too many amateur Podcasts from organisations that should really know better.
4. Give em a reason to keep listening within the first thirty seconds.
5. Give em something at the end as a little extra. (A device to keep listening)
6. Make the description work for you. Again grab them and give them reasons to listen.