Creative Space

we all need it here are some pics of awesome work spaces.  So why is the space we work in so very important.? Well I have just moved studios the big back bedroom in our house was the studio, spacious and quiet, now I am in a tiny box room at the front trying to make it work as a space, I am about half-way there.

My good colleague Steve Blacknell a fellow voiceover artist cannot work from home, he told me the other day. "I can't get the buzz or the performance at home, I need to be in a studio in London with real people directing me."

I know how he feels, however convenient my little voice booth is here at home, it's not the same discipline as being shoved in a booth in a Soho studio.  That doesn't mean with the right frame of mind you can't create a decent performance.

The key is to make the space apart from the house, make it a place that you go to work in.  Dear Darling Sandi Toksvig who has written a clutch of best sellers, toddles off to a shed at the bottom of her garden - a space away from the kids.

So why not take a few ideas from Google and the rest and make your space somewhere different and creative. Below Dr Who storage, Epic office reception - a mock tube train.  Google and their slide, Groupon and their TV set like space.

3s A Crowd

Ultimately #radio is the relationship between broadcaster (singular) and listener (singular) and adding a third person or more should be done with caution.  OK I am talking about radio shows that are interactive phone, text, social media.

When a guest is introduced they become a third person in the conversation.  It's rather like being at a party chatting away to your friend when another person bounds up and your friend suddenly ignores you and just talks to this new third person.  How very rude! But that scenario happens time and again on radio shows, when the listener is completely ignored as the host indulges the guest.

If the show does not have interactivity there is already an expectation from the listener that although they will not be included in the conversation the host will make sure to ask questions that still keeps the listener onboard and on the same journey.  Again there are hosts who might know their guest personally and start talking about irrelevant personal experiences, which again alienate the listener.

Everyone's A Winner

Michael Winner a nightmare LBC973 guest.  A bully and one of the rudest people I have ever met and he made really poor films.  So I was surprised that he was being called a 'national treasure' following his death yesterday.

My first encounter with Michael was when he shouted down the LBC corridor "When the f*ck am I going to be on?" I told him right now, with that he took that massive stinking Montecristo cigar he was always smoking from his mouth and dropped it on the brand new carpet that had just been fitted the day before and then ground the burning cheroot into the pile leaving a burn hole through to the floor.

Encounter number two was when Pete Murray's Programme Assistant came running into the control room shouting - "He's gone!"

"Who's gone?"

"Michael Winner , he says he's been waiting for twenty minutes and he's leaving right now."

As luck would have it the news had just come on and I dispatched Pete to chase after the film mogul and bring him back.

As for his films, Pete Murray starred in what he described as one of the worst films ever made - "The Cool Mikado" at some point in the film Pete had to sing about Coventry and I believe Michael had the idea of involving Pete singing in a lions cage.  "Don't worry Pete, we've drugged the lion, you'll be perfectly safe." Winner told Murray.  Pete jumped into the cage, the lion woke up from his slumber and made a swipe at Pete who promptly jumped out of the cage.  "I thought you said he was f*cking drugged." said Pete.  "Maybe he was just asleep then." replied Winner.

For more tall tales of Michael Winner and LBC click here to read Iain Dale's latest blog

Free Sh*t

Bags of free poo to win. The finest blended Horse sh*t in a bag was once offered to me as a possible prize on our gardening phone-in. A well-known fertiliser company had contacted me offering the prize.

'OK' I said so long as you can deliver it to the winners.  They agreed and our presenter Therese Birch did an editorial feature where we just happened to mention the name of the company a few times.  'Now' she said 'I have 20 FREE bags to give away.'

I really didn't expect much interest but by the time the 10 second delay had gone, ALL the phone lines were ringing.  It then dawned on me that we were actually giving away sh*t and because it was FREE sh*t listeners were calling in their droves.

SO don't bother with £30,000 mystery voices cash or Caribbean holidays - just give away sh*t - remember to say the word 'FREE' first though!

Chocs Away

@Selfridges supplied the best freebie ever.  It was during their 1990s refurbishment, they had opened a chocolate department and invited a handful of journalists to an evening event where we discovered that they were spending millions on turning, what in the 1980s was a rather tired department store, into a cutting-edge retail emporium.

Best of all we were allowed to visit the new Chocolate and Candy department and help ourselves to anything we wanted.  WOW! It was like an episode of Willy Wonka with greedy journos gorging themselves and filling their baskets up with sweet treats.

I have to hand it to Selfridges they really know how to make publicity work for them - how many other department stores have a Masterpiece Theatre drama made about their shops? 

Being Boring

Some presenters mistake their private lives, the endless and dull discussion of their private life, as 'personality' radio. Sure the odd mention of the family is OK but don't endlessly talk about yourself - it's boring. Personal views, though are universal and interesting and can be related to by the listener. source: Valerie Geller

Valerie is about 90% right, my caveat - if you can take something from your private life and use it as an example of a personal view, that's fine.  But vacuously chatting about everyday things, is frankly boring radio.

A bunch of pluggers

With celebs it's all want and no give.  At least that's my experience. If they haven't got a book out, appearing in a film or panto season has arrived you are very unlikely to get a celeb guest just to 'pop' in to say hello.

I can't blame them. Most look upon publicity as a necessary evil of the business they are in.  So when I was asked to produce a series called 'Pete Meets' a strand where celebs pop in and say hello, my heart sank.  The idea, I was told by my Programme Controller was that a collection of his showbiz chums would come onto the show and talk in depth about their relationship with Pete (Murray) and share anecdotes about the business.

Well it took me months of tricky negotiation to get some of them on.  My favourite was the old trouper Dora Bryan now a hospitalised very frail old lady but in the 1990s she was busy acting and running a hotel in Brighton.

"I'll come for forty pounds and I shall travel by train to London first class and you will pay for that as well."  I remember asking my Editor to clear her expenses.  "First class!" he said as if this was the most decadent thing a celeb had demanded since Ertha Kitt wanted a dozen red roses in her dressing room.  (When we explained the radio station didn't have a dressing room Ertha's reply according to her P.A. was. "Well I'm still having the f*cking roses, if you want me.") 

Anyway Dora duly arrived and she was worth every penny of that first class fare and £40 budget.  I remember Chris sneaking into the live studio with a cup of tea for Pete and Dora mid question, stopped and said to Chris "Two sugars in mine love and make it a strong one." So I guess not all celebs are a bunch of pluggers.

Dino Time

I have mostly been a dinosaur this week.  Working on a series of radio features for Fun Kids and the Natural History Museum it's an epic production with two voice artists, Yannick male v/o and Alexander child v/o oh and plenty of sound effects.  Trouble is nobody has ever heard a dinosaur and Mr Spielberg has kinda stolen the show.

You can actually buy the Spielberg effects, but I thought I would try some home-made ones.  I have been crunching celery, slowing the recording down and altering the EQ and its sounding just like a 25 metre herbivore snacking.

Then I took some lion cub effects and slowed them down altered the pitch and got some very recognisable dinosaur effects  - well actually they sounded just like the ones from Jurassic Park, funny that!

You couldn't make it up

Unless you are the BBC Panorama show.  I call it a 'show' because that's what it has become.  The BBC are to apologise to Primark over 'faked' footage of child labour during an edition of Panorama three years ago.  Since seeing that programme I stopped shopping in the store and now feel disappointed that the integrity of this programme and my trust has been compromised. 

But Panorama is not alone in not always telling the 'absolute truth.'  The minute you walk into an editing suite or sit down in front of Final Cut or on radio Audition or SADiE you are about to change the absolute truth.

We all want our work to stand out, sometimes the guest doesn't say just what we want them to or in the right order.  So with a bit of judicial editing we can make them appear to be and say something they are not.  Sure there are rules; the BBC Producers guide has pages of them.  But who is going to know?  What are the chances of anyone finding out? 

I wonder just how many TV and radio shows have had their Panorama moment? Only they didn't get caught

From now on I don't think I will truly believe anything that the Panorama team broadcast.  I am not sure I did anyway. Perhaps the show should be  quietly led off to the knackers yard and put to rest.

Strip Tease

Naked Radio? Well that's been done before and only really works if there is a webcam in the studio. No the strip I am talking about is the practice of stripping programmes at the same time.  In radio this happens as a matter of necessity with the exception of well-resourced stations like Radio 4 who have a loyal audience who are attracted to the stations somewhat eclectic scheduling.

In Talk Format it is essential that shows are broadcast at the same time everyday and the weekend should also mirror this, albeit with a bit of tinkering at breakfast and in the evening to reflect listeners weekend lifestyle.

After the strip, the tease is probably the most important structure in radio.  Telling your audience what you are about to do and when you are going to do it is paramount.  Radio audiences do not like surprises they like the furniture to be in the same place, they like the regular features to be just that and they really hate it when a Presenter  (host) dares to take a holiday (vacation)

In my next blog I will write about the secret of amassing untold wealth.  Well that's a lie but it's a very good tease.    

Why radio ? from David Tyler

'Radio is a funny beast. Some get into it for the money and leave quickly when they realize there is no big pay day for the majority. Others get into it for the passion but are quickly drained of it because they don't fully understand the link between radio and their 'passion'. Yet others get into radio for all the 'free stuff'...but they usually have the least skill and are pushed out anyway.

Radio is an emotional medium. It's all about relationships...and requires a zeal for creating, building and maintaining relationships. (I'm talking about the intimate relationship between broadcaster and listener, not the off air political relationships of running a business, leave that to the managers)...

I got into radio to satisfy my selfish thirst for finding connection, a desire that I believe we all have, but that radio people have been able to turn into what we would call a broadcasting career.

If you're able to push out all of the distractions of 'doing radio' and focus on the intimate emotional aspect of relationship creating and building, you will flourish in it for as long as you choose to do radio.' David Tyler - David Tyler Communications Inc Canada

It's all about ME

Human connection, that's what talk radio is all about.  They will listen to issues that involve them.  That's the view of Radio Consultant Valerie Geller.  She also thinks humour plays a crucial role in that connection.

Me issues about health, money or stories that appeal to an emotion and that tell the truth.  Whatever you do it should never be boring.  Read more about Valerie Geller and her new book 'Beyond Powerful Radio.'

Mneomic Plague

A whole bunch of little acronym's to make great radio.

The first is NIT - nit is all about news BUT it can be applied to everything you do on the radio, whether you are a host, DJ or Journalist.  When you decide whether to put a story in your bulletin or run a studio line in your show try Nit which stands for:

New - is this something that has just happened? Is this new information?

Interesting this is the tough bit of nit, is a story interesting to your listeners, does it apply to their geographical location? Does it appeal to their demographic?  Is it interesting to them?

Finally and importantly is it True?  And can you talk about it? That the story is not an active court case or might defame someone.

The second is Tell Em.  Radio is the blind intimate medium you have to help your listener, guide them through a story or a promo.  Tell you are going to tell em' - warn your listener that they are about to hear something of interest.  Tell them - tell the story and finally Tell em again - recap on the story.

Kiss is whatever you do on radio Keep It Simple Stupid.  Complex stuff, promos or lots of numbers or rules just fall flat on their arse (ass) so keep the ideas simple, one at a time and clear and easy but compelling.

Aida is a way of writing promos and to some extent bully pieces.  Aida stands for  A - attention = "win a holiday"  I - Interest = "In the Caribbean."  D - Desire = "The golden sand, azure blue sky." A - action = "Call us now on 12345."  You can use this structure to fashion promos, trails and bulletins.

Under The Influence

Or don't trust your audience. Ask yourself a question are the listeners that phone in, text, tweet and email, - your audience?  If you answered  yes I am afraid you're a bit wrong, not totally but you really haven't grasped just what phone-in shows are all about.

The kind of engaged listener who calls or uses social media to contribute to the show is an active member of your audience, in percentage terms about 10% of a Talkback radio format station audience will fall into this category which means a massive 90% are passive - content to listen to Dora from Penge who thinks she's just met Elvis serving behind the till at her local Londis store.

It is important that you don't, for want of a better saying, let the lunatics take over the asylum. You are falling into a deadly trap if you just pick topics and produce material that will appeal to the active 10% of your audience.  By all means tempt them to call with a juicy little morsel that will make them call, but never think that tiny majority are actually all that are listening.

You Muppet

Her Ladyship was just 4 foot tall and smelled bad. I have to say it was an honour to meet Lady Penelope, and actually I thought she would be much smaller in real life.  Her faithful butler Parker was looking the worse for wear with his mouth half open in a drunken scowl.  We were told that the mechanism that made his mouth move was leather and the leather had rotted, poor old Parker.

As a child I was in awe of Thunderbirds, most childrens programmes in the late sixties had, shall we say, compromised production values and were shoddily put together, but these shows were different.  Fast forward to last week when I caught the programme again on the TV and I was amazed just how good the show stood up against the world of HD and CGI.

Radio shows are a different matter, there are no sets, lights or cameras and it's easy to produce quite a shoddy show and get away with it.  I have done my share of truly awful shows, but equally I have put time effort and love into other shows and they shine out and I can remember them well.

It's worth putting a little extra in everything you do as a Producer, take the time to look the fact up, make the Production a lot better by finding just the right sound effect.  Read the book that the book guest has written. Take the time to get the edit right.  One day you will look back and realise that they were your best shows, you might also be quite annoyed that you never kept copies of them, but then radio is the ethereal medium. 

Twiggy was So Good

Twiggy who still is the face of fashion although now for Marks and Spencer, ( I think that was a brilliant coup for the store as she is the perfect choice for their brand,) came into the studio - some years ago. Before she got her deal with M&S, she was promoting 'So Good' a soya alternative to milk.

It's interesting that most people of her celebrity standing would have an entourage around her, not Twiggy, she came down to the studio on her own lugging a great big cool box of the soya milk in one hand and in the other she had a copy of the Daily Mirror.

Like the professional she is, she had also turned up a good 30 minutes before her interview, so she plonked herself down beside me and after telling me I could keep the cool box, (which we still have, I lugged it back on the tube minus the soya milk) she started flicking through the Mirror.  It was then that she began talking about some of the stories in the paper, she spoke in a most cogent way about her take on the news.  I was really impressed, so when I heard a few months later she had been picked to co-present 'This Morning' the ITV daytime show I thought she would be really rather good at it.

Turned out I was wrong.  I caught an episode of the show and it was a total car crash.  I don't know why,? Maybe Twiggy wasn't comfortable about the mechanics of actually presenting live TV it might have been just too much for her?

Getting celebs to present radio or TV shows is often, in my experience, a big mistake.  Great guests and celebrities don't always make the transition to being great presenters.  So if you are a PD thinking about getting a celeb in ...maybe do a few 'dry runs' first just to see if they have the skills to do the job.

Let's Go Outside

We've done it on a plane, in someones garden and up the BT Tower.  There's nothing like a good OB or 'remote' as our American cousins like to call them.  Trouble is most of them sound rubbish on the radio.  True they are a great wheeze for all the staff involved.  you usually get some expenses for lunch and you get out of the studio, but mostly OB's on the radio are crap listening.

In commercial radio most OB's are client led, that is to say a big spending advertiser says why don't you come along down to our car showroom and broadcast your show from there? And you are obliged to say yes and frantically think of some weak editorial reason why you might be there.  The result? Pretty poor radio.

"Your" BBC Local will have a different agenda.. for instance it's national library week, let's broadcast from the local library.  Excuse me while a have a short snooze - and yes you've guessed it three hours of turgid broadcasting with the local librarian - kill me now!

So my advice to the OB brigade is to stay at home and make better radio, just because you have a radio car or an ISDN link to the Town Hall, doesn't mean you should use it.

Oh and the broadcast from a plane - that was Chris from the cockpit of a Virgin Atlantic 747 (Pre 9/11) flying over Greenland - we still have the tape - great technical achievement - rubbish radio.

Ghost in the machine

I saw a ghost yesterday.  It was a ghost from the past but I could touch it, see it and even smell it?  Way back in 1981 I joined a brand new spanking radio station in Southend called Essex Radio.  They had just spent 1.2 million pounds on a fantastic set of studios in a building they called 'Radio House' The studios were built two floors underground in what had been the printing press room of the local paper.

Well I left the station in 1984 to join LBC and have been back once since in 1988, but yesterday I returned to those old studios, now owned by Yellow Media.  I suppose its like going back to your old school, first of all everything seemed a lot smaller than I remembered. But to my astonishment and a testament to the superb engineering skills of Essex Radio's Chief Engineer - Andy Gemmell-Smith the place is pretty much how I left it.

OK the studios had been refurbed by GWR when they owned Essex, but they still had the original second generation of mixing desks in the studio and they were laid out in the same configuration as the original studios of 1981and the racks room was exactly the same with the same equipment. Even the studio speakers were the original Tannoy Super Red 10B's!

A new DAB radio station starts broadcasting from the studios in a few weeks time Chance Radio and it will be great to see live programming come once again from those fantastic studios in the heart of Southend-on-Sea.  (Picture above Chance Studio - old Essex CR2 studio with Eela Audio desks and BCX playout.) They are streaming now click here to listen.

The Day I Nearly Died

I nearly died at the weekend, well almost because I had man Flu, the worst kind where you ache all over and feel very sorry for yourself.  I was so ill I spent two days in bed, I couldn't be bothered to watch TV so had the radio on instead.  Mostly Radio 7 that treasure trove of sometimes superb sometimes a little bit, er, crap programming from the BBC archives. 

I also listened to Radio 4 that cosy middle-class radio station where the listeners cling on to it like a child to a comfort blanket.  I remember falling asleep to some pretentious rubbish about something or other chaired by a very well-spoken BBC woman and her Chelsea or possibly Notting Hill clique.  I woke up though to The Food Programme which was all about the future of the Irish food industry.

This was a superb programme, robustly presented with excellent contributors, proper and sparse use of music and effects, when the effects were there somebody was explaining what we were hearing - oh joy.  Also the narrative drove the piece, it flowed effortlessly from one topic to another.

Also I heard the most amazing use of audio.  The reporter talking to a farmer about his farm allowed the farmer to answer the question and then as the farmer drifted off topic, he took a fade and ran a voice over with the farmer still blabbing in the distance and then stopped his VO at the point where the farmer became interesting again.  We were always told never to mix vocal with vocal but on this occasion it worked really well. So well done Radio 4 you are the best resourced station in the world and sometimes you produce the best programmes too.

A change for the better

Change can be good, a change of diet, a change of scenery the list goes on and it should include accepting change in the work that you do.  Linda Gage my much missed Journalism Tutor used to say if you can't stand to be subbed, don't become a journalist.  I have worked with people who have become so precious about their work that they shut themselves off to constructive improvement and change.

It has been my experience that when you are close to a project you sometimes, as the saying goes, 'can't see the trees for the wood.' It really helps to have a second pair of ears or eyes on any project your working on.  I have just completed an HD wedding video, having sent a copy of to the bride she has asked for about three changes and now when I look at the changed video she is absolutely right, what she has suggested has improved the video.

So as a Radio Producer, when someone comes up to you with some of their own ideas on your project, don't get defensive, take on board what they have to say, try out their ideas.