What Global Radio Taught Me

I was part of the news team at Global radio based at Salford Quays, who broadcast the news for the North West’s Heart, Smooth Radio and Capital radio stations. I felt really nervous before starting at Global for my 1-week placement because I was unsure what the team were going to ask me to do and what they would expect of me. When I first met one of the team members, Simon Williams, he gave me a story about mobile phone usage whilst driving. I was surprised that they gave me a microphone straight away and sent me out to get vox pops from members of the public. I felt this set the bar for the rest of the week; they obviously had faith in my ability and training from university to feel confident enough to send me out to cover stories. Throughout the week, there was a steady flow of news stories for me to cover however it was difficult when it was a slow news day because I wasn’t given any tasks and I was just told to research potential stories. I was also given long interviews to clip up, which went on to help me for my role as radio technical editor in the news days.

During my time at Global, I took the opportunity when I didn’t have much to do, to look through burli, which is the editing and wire system they used. I read through the different wires and listened to previous packages. I looked out for when one of the journalists, Alison Spooner, who I spent the majority of my time with, looked less busy. I asked if I could sit in on a news bulletin when she read it out. I learnt a lot from this; she taught me about changing the intonation of her voice and about how important it was to keep to the time as it is a commercial radio station. I learnt that the bulletins were pre-recorded, which gave her a chance to rerecord if needed. It was recorded a few minutes in advance to sent out to the different stations and also add the weather. This is something I would like to introduce to the news for The University of Salford’s Shock Radio, which I am secretary for.

One of my biggest highlights over my placement was when I interviewed ex-offender Zac Challinor about how he turner his life around to become an apprentice teaching assistant and won an award for his effort. I could tell Zac was nervous and he told me that he has never been interviewed before, especially for a popular radio station. I made sure we built a good rapport and told him exactly what I was going to ask him before we started. I learnt a lot from Alison Spooner, who went through my script for the package. She taught me about writing as ‘you would speak’. For example, Global’s house style involved changing ‘whilst’ to ‘while’. She also praised me on my choice of clips.

I also really enjoyed attending the Homeless Football event at Hotel Football. I interviewed both organisers and players then clipped up the best bits for the bulletins and also wrote the script for the package that was played on the nightly news programme.