Before we were even started college, I always had a feeling I would hate this unit. I don’t talk often so I wasn’t confident in presenting a slideshow let alone an entire radio show and it being for an entire hour also didn’t help my confidence going into it. In all honesty I didn’t think I’d like anything about it other than finally getting it over and done with

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Our theme for the radio show was obviously inspired by how this is a student radio show. Me and my co-host took this theme in different directions (I went literally, theming our idents as if they were in a student lounge; my co-host instead went for a more vaporwave and relaxing theme) and we only realised once we finished making the idents, but I think both of our ideas fit together well. We didn’t heavily decide on a final idea that way, more that we both interpreted the title differently and it still worked out

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I did research on many subjects to help me with my radio show, there’s a full research list in my Radio Production page as well. I also did research by giving out a questionnaire to people and with the email interview I did with a friend who does presentations. Most of what I researched on the list wasn’t actually that helpful and, other than the subject research for the news, the only thing that really helped was doing research into radio presenting skills with how close I should be to the microphone. I was suggested previously to start using different sources like books which I did start doing for this unit, but other than that I’m not sure if I’ve improved from unit 4 because the research list from that unit really helped me. That might be an issue with the research list itself rather than me getting worse at researching though. Later on I also did research into more celebrity news I could talk about as I was worried that my radio show wasn’t long enough (the feedback from my pitch also said the same and suggested that we should add another celebrity topic as well), but I didn’t use it at all because I came up with the idea to add an entirely new topic instead: the Q&A section. We did minor research into questions for that as well

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One of the topics in the research list was relationship advice, which I didn’t even end up using. The research into the top charts wasn’t that useful either as I ended up using different songs in my show. Ultimately it was the email and the questionnaire that were the most important. The questionnaire’s answers reaffirmed my idea to add a weather section to emphasise that this show is a drivetime show and also gave us our name for the radio show. The original name was “An Evening With Eden and Jaxmine” but we both weren’t completely happy with it, which is why one of the questions in the questionnaire is if the name was good. Most said yes, but we got a few responses that thought the same as we did about the name (that it was a bit boring and plain). One of the answers suggested the name “The Student Lounge” and we liked it so much that we decided to go with it. The email was also important for me to improve in my presenting skills just before we had to do a pitch to the class

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Overall though the pitch went smoothly. Me and my co-host were clear with why we chose to do certain things and elaborated on our points well, especially while talking about our target audience. We also got feedback on needing another topic and possibly linking to our social media as at the time we were planning to end off with the social awareness (mental health) section. I improved significantly from the previous presentations I did as I faced the audience and spoke a lot more even when I didn’t need to. The email really helped me, especially with the suggestions about having less detail on the slides and having cue cards so you know what to say. I also partly feel like it was because me and my co-host switched talking for each slide so I didn’t have to say everything. While I was dreading actually doing it, I knew this unit would help better my presentation skills and with the pitch it really showed

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For the most part my co-host was the one writing the script as I’ve never written a script before and didn’t know where to even start, so I was the one who edited the script to make sure we stayed within the remit and it all made sense. Personally I heavily prefer editing and tweaking writing instead of actually doing it myself so it was the perfect job for me. I think overall I did a good job on that. While coming up with our new topic, we knew we would have to change the schedule to include it. We decided to put the Q&A section last so that we wouldn’t end the radio show on such a heavy topic. Later on we also had to replace one of our songs as we couldn’t find a clean version of the original song, we decided to choose one with a similar time as at this point we knew from our rehearsals that our show was very close to one hour

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I learnt that radio production had a lot more roles in it than I thought it did. Professional radio shows have live editors, marketers, researchers and of course presenters. While it definitely isn’t an industry I ever want to get into, I think it’s interesting how many people are involved in it behind the scenes

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For our two rehearsals there was always a technical issue. For our first rehearsal one of our idents weren’t working and then suddenly none of them worked, since we were already partway into the script we didn’t have enough time to fully finish the rehearsals. We were the first one coming in for the second rehearsal and there was something wrong with the system we used to record. This majorly cut our hour to rehearse into only around half an hour. We were luckily able to get through most of our show but we had to cut the news and all music to save time. I was majorly worried that we would have a technical issue when it came to do our actual live show

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Despite my initial fears of having to be a presenter in a radio show, it wasn’t actually as bad as I thought it’d be. It came to me naturally since the first rehearsal and didn’t feel as awkward as I thought it would. I think this is because of the topics we chose and also due to how we had a script, so if we didn’t know what else to say we could just read off of it. This unit really improved my confidence and socialness, which I think is very important as I knew those were skills I heavily lacked

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While making my idents I heavily leant into having a theme as I felt it was extremely important. I always like focusing on theming but with a radio show it’s especially important so it can set the tone and give it its own identity from other radio shows. I chose to lean into the “Student Lounge” name of the show and I ended up really liking the Programme ID I did, we ended up using it for the radio show. Though now that I look back on it, I think it would’ve been better if I made one where “The Student Lounge” was said earlier. The Programme ID also fit in with students listening as I made it sound like a place they would be in at school. I wasn’t as happy with the Station ID I made though as it was pretty simple, we chose to not use it in the show as my co-host felt the same way about it. We had voice overs in our idents that promoted both the Barnfield Radio station and our own radio show, we also made sure to play them regularly as shown on the running order. The peer assessment I got of the show also agreed with the idents fitting the show and with all of them matching the relaxed theme I was aiming for. One of them also agreed with the consistency of shouting out barnfield radio and our show, mentioning how we were able to incorporate our station and programme name at the end of conversations instead of always playing an ident

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I didn’t have any major expectations for how the radio show would turn out, but I was fairly confident that the radio show would be good because of how much I liked the script. Overall I really like how the radio show turned out at the end, it was also really fun recording it. I think that also showed as one of my peer assessments mentioned how the presenters had really good chemistry. The way we had met the remit was with our content, we heavily focused on topics that would appeal to the target audience while being fun for us to talk about. I think this approach also helped us as the presenters sound more engaged and more interested in the topics. Our first topic was about Spotify, which we already knew a lot of people in the target audience used, and we focused on audience participation for that section. We also had our advice column dedicated to questions from the audience, call-ins for our competition and social awareness sections and generally tried to promote our social media any way we could naturally. As the target audience are media-savvy and are mostly mainstreamers we thought that that would be an easy way to appeal to them. We had a section called “Track of The Day” that was dedicated to promoting upcoming UK artists. We made sure to frequently signpost before cutting to adverts or music as well to keep the audience invested. The peer feedback mentioned how the topics were enjoyable to listen to and felt very casual, my audience feedback also said the same and talked about how interesting they were. While showing someone in our class our second rehearsal they said that the topics sounded like conversations you would hear at a lunch table. All of the feedback we got about our topic was exactly what I was aiming for, I was very confident in our script for a reason. While picking the music, me and my co-host made sure to pick songs that we actually liked. Since we are the target audience that the show is aiming for, I think this decision helped with adding diverse genres in our show but still keeping in touch with what people liked. Our adverts also appeal to the target audience as they’re all things the audience would be able to purchase such as Mcdonalds or ASOS

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The criticism I got back from the peer assessment was that there were some awkward pauses, I purposely asked if there was any because I recognised that there would be some while recording. These pauses are because my editor was trying to find the song or the advert to play. After doing peer assessments for other peoples radio shows I think it was a bit unavoidable since I noticed it was a common problem with everyone else. My audience feedback mentioned that there was some stuttering in some parts and I agree

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I think my radio is reflective of industry standards for how much we follow the remit and regular ofcom regulations. As part of our research we had to read the Ofcom guidelines and I think doing that actually helped us slightly. We made sure to follow it and we did when we had to replace a song because it had swearing in it and swearing was prohibited for shows catered towards minors. Following the remit is something every radio station has to do and The Student Lounge heavily follows that remit as it’s incorporated into the schedule and also for the reasons above. I also found out through my research list that presenters sometimes read without a script at all and ad lib the entire thing. While we couldn’t do that because we had to have a script, we tried to do the same by ad libbing for some of the shorter parts in our show such as the talk we had about celebrity baby names in the celebrity news section

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Overall I really dreaded this unit but it was much more fun than I thought it’d be. While I do acknowledge the problems in our live show, I also recognise that it turned out slightly better than I thought it would. I was much more confident in myself than I thought I would be and this unit really helped me improve that. I also got better with my social and presenting skills. While a part of this is due to other factors, I really have to thank my co-host. I don’t think it would’ve turned out as good if I was partnered with someone else and we genuinely had really good chemistry that was clear throughout the show