Ramblings on radio, beer, the internet and other stuff that I come across.

Beer Cellar

A while ago I promised Martin Steers a beer related post. At the time I was in the middle of a lent based beer-freeze, which prevented me from consuming a huge amount of the stuff, or visiting any nice pubs.

I’ve since had a chance to attend a few pubs, and also one of my favorite places in the world – an off licence with Ales on tap, which will fill up a vessel of your choice with the beer of your choice. The place I speak of is The Bitter End, just around the corner from my girlfriend’s house in Bromley, London (or Kent depending on your definition). The place is an actual treasure trove of hard-to-come by bottled beers and ciders (including if you’re devoid of the ability to taste a number of exotic lagers) at really quite reasonable prices. The key draw for me though is (as I say) the ability to take home 4 pints in a flagon from the tap. I’ve just polished off my supply of Wadworth’s 6X from my last visit (frustratingly they’d just run out of St Austell Tribute – which is a favorite of mine) in the past I’ve had some really good beers recommended by the proprietor, who’s pretty good at finding you a tipple if you can tell him a few beers you enjoy.

Whilst also in this kneck of the woods, I actually bumbled into this place  – The Grasshopper in Westerham (Kent). We only stopped for a coffee, but it’s a really nice pub – an absolutely massive place, which appears to have been a Tudor great hall in a previous life, and practically unchanged since. Lots of beams, and eclectic artwork abound, as well as a log fire if that’s to your taste – the carvery smelt quite excellent, and I’m sure is probably worth a go. Even if you only pop in (as we did) because your in the area and it looks intreguing – worth popping your head around the door if you happen to be passing.

More beer & pubs soon….

When I started this blog, my intention was to write about radio and media stuff, and possibly beer, somehow though I (like a lot of people of late) have been somewhat sucked into politics as probably the most interesting situation to occur in UK politics since Mrs Thatcher’s ‘dethronement’ in 1990 takes shape around us.

I’m trying to avoid wittering on about coalitions, or who I think should be in charge (if you’re interested, on this issue I agree with Nick), instead I thought I’d share my limited insight into an issue which is highly likely to form a major part of any deal between the Lib Dems and anyone else, that of electoral reform.

6 years ago, when studying for a politics AS level, I wrote an essay on this subject – at the time coming down on the side of ‘First-past-the-Post’ (our current system) for a number of reasons. My views have varied slightly since, so I’ll try to set out my vision for a political system which ought to work a lot better on the grounds of fairness and transparency – whilst maintaining the simplicity and relative ease of administration of the current system.

Before I start, I’m going to assume a certain level of knowledge here – as for me to write a full essay on the subject here is a bit much. I’m assuming you’re aware that ‘Proportional Representation’ isn’t a thing, it’s a collection of things (see wiki) and that there are also hybrid systems which offer a level of proportionality on a one-seat per constituency basis. I’m also assuming you have a lose knowledge of the British constitution and how westminster is supposed to operate (i.e. one democratically elected house, of which the party with an absolute majority form the government, where no absolute majority is the case the dealings start – also a house of lords which acts as a check/balance on Westminster policies and essentially has a right of veto over policy from the first house).

Now, my strong belief is that any electoral reform has to encompas more than just the Westminster government – for one there’s the ludicrous semi-hereditary, semi-appointed House of Lords, there’s also local Government elections to be considered. I’ll leave European Elections out from this – as they already use a proportional system, which seems to be relatively effective.

The House of Commons

So, voting for the House of Commons is the key area being discussed at the moment. We’ve had first past the post for a long time here in the UK, and it’s been pretty effective, It’s nice and simple to understand, and explain to people (more votes than everyone else in your constituency wins a seat, 50% + 1 of seats makes a government), low on administration to carry out – and difficult to misinterpret the results.

The common criticism is the fact that often on both a local and national level there isn’t a simple correlation between the number of votes and the amount of influence gained. For example in last weeks election the breakdown looks as follows:

• Conservatives 47% of seats for 36% of Votes
• Labour 40% of seats for 29% of votes
• Liberal Democrats 9% of seats for 23% of votes

This is patently not a fair system for the 3 major parties (look at the difference between Labour and Lib Dems on seats v. votes to see how unfair the system is). Essentially for coming second in a large number of constituencies the Lib Dems get nothing.

This seems a pretty powerful argument for something which gives a better proportion of votes to seats, but…. there are also arguments for first-past-the-post. For one, in general proportional representation means big constituencies, or even no constituencies – losing the idea of ‘your local MP’ and alienating politics from any local issues and making them more and more of an American style elite who don’t see much outside their Washington Westminster village. The constituency link is vitally important and it would be wrong to underestimate this in trying to achieve ‘fairness’.

Another argument is that proportional representation ‘lets the nutters in’ – as parties like the BNP would under a fully proportional system stand a far higher chance of achieving some influence within Westminster. I don’t subscribe to this at all – for anyone who was familiar with my role in the proposed ‘no-platform’ policy at the University of Bath will know my belief on minority parties whom appear unsavory to a large number of people loosely echoes the views of a panelist on Sunday’s Politics Show who said “These minority parties should be allowed to firm part of the political system – so they can stand up to democratic scrutiny and ultimately be defeated by an informed electorate, not ghettoised and allowed to grow through allegations of being the discriminated” (this is very much paraphrased).

Anyway, where does that leave my views on Westminster… we’ll for my mind we need a more proportional system – which still give’s MPs an area of responsibility and still gives the electorate a channel for bringing the attention of central government to issues outside London (private members’ bills are often started when an MP is alerted to an issue affecting their constituents)

Ladies and Gentlemen I present compromise, in the form of the Alternative Vote System. In short this is a hybrid system, which it’s really easy to convert to from FPTP (you can even use the same ballot papers, more or less). Which involves ranking candidates in order of preference, first choice votes for candidates move to second, third etc. preference down the paper until a single candidate has an absolute (50% + 1) majority. The best explanation of this system I’ve ever found comes from Bath Impact (AVS was used in student’s union elections at Bath) – unfortunately I can’t find this online, so here’s one from the NUJ.

Whilst the AVS isn’t idea, it will lead to people’s votes mattering far more (as even if your first choice candidate isn’t elected, it may be your second or third who gets in) – it should also do away with wasted votes as the winning candidate in a constituency will be the first, second or third preference of an absolute majority of the electorate – yet we can still maintain the relatively small constituencies which support the constituency link.

I know AVS doesn’t satisfy true advocates of Proportional Representation, but don’t stop reading just yet, my second reform should give you something to think about….

The House of Lords

It’s a bit of a joke isn’t it – all the policies of our democratically elected government are approved by a selection of musty peers and cronies of governments past before becoming law. Bizarre isn’t it.

It’s vital to have a some kind of checks and balance in the law making process, and the electorate themselves rarely act as such (apart from on the 5 yearly terms of parliaments, or in the rare case of a referendum) – the second house is one of these.

A big sticking point on an elected house of lords is the fact that if it were elected in the same way as the commons it’s composition would loosely reflect that of the commons -and thus would be as effective a check/balance as not having any check at all. There’s a simple solution to this though – elect the second chamber with a different (and more proportional) system – this would give us a very different make up of the lords to the commons under FPTP or AVS yet without the issues caused by the potential for no party having absolute power in the house (the stories of hung-parliaments leading to the downfall of the country that some areas of the press like to push). The chanber would hopefully then be able to offer real scrutiny to the executive, as well as being constitutionally divided from the commons (no member of the ‘lords’ would be able to sit as a Minister, to ensure a solid line between the role of legislator and scrutiniser)

All seems kind of logical now… (also on a totally national level, administering Party List is relatively simple Single Transferable Vote is a brain ache, especially as generally the idea of using IT for any government project becomes a massive cock up).

Council Elections

Obvious one for party lists these, as their influence is over a fixed area, everyone lists their preference and those percentages form the basis for making up the Councils.

 

In conclusion, I hope this has been a relatively informed ramble through proportional representation, and I’ve tried to be analytical rather than partisan with my opinions – naturally you’re welcome to comment with other ideas, or just because you think I’m talking nonsence.

I promise I’ll write a post about something for those who really aren’t interested in this whole politics thing soon…

For one reason or another I haven’t had much to blog about these last few weeks, or at any rate – nothing which was too long to fit on twitter.

A few quick bits that have passed through my mind though….

• Radio Listening: I’ve been enjoying the excellent ‘Vote Now’ show on Radio 4. A fantastic satire on the election process and the British political system in general – I’ve been lucky enough to attend a couple of these at the recording stage, and they’re even more amusing up close. I’m also genuinely impressed by the production team on this show, who manage to turn the show around in about 4 hours from finishing the recording to airing the programme itself.
• Leaders Debates: These are second only to ‘The Apprentice’ for programmes to follow along with on Twitter (really missing the apprentice so far this year by the way). The debates themselves have proven fantastic in engaging the public with the election – and whilst most of my contributions tend to be childish remarks on what is said by the leaders, I’ll be amazed if these (along with the ‘Hung Parliament’ situation) don’t lead to a record turnout at the polls.
• … and on the above, why has no-one done a decent cut-up of these yet. I’d have hoped cassetteboy would have weighed in (although his One Show efforts are brilliant) – maybe I should have a go myself, what do you recon?
• It was also good to see a relatively high brow interview on breakfast commercial radio this week when Absolute Radio interviewed Professor Brian Cox (who’s series on the Solar System I must watch more of) – I think Absolute got the  balance between educational end entertainment spot on with this (and I was a little bit late to work, because I had to hang on to catch the whole thing). I’ve been listening to absolute a lot since acquiring a DAB radio recently, and whilst it can be a bit blokey and football-focused for me (though what to expect with a world cup on) the experience has been far from unpleasant.
• Other things I’ve learned this week: The radio-mic was invented in 1949, I discovered this after this humble gadget played a big part in this weeks news (dot.Rory being my source).
• Music recommendations this week: Train – Hey, Soul Sister.
• Oh, and a nice little toy from Farrington labs for those interested in Student Radio. Here’s the Student Radio Playlist for this week.

Hopefully I’ll find something to write a proper blog about something interesting soon, promise.

… or at least on the radio!

So, on Tuesday the “one eyed scottish idiot” (Clarkson, 2009) called a general election – as this isn’t really news as most of the word knew the election would be on May 6th, I thought I’d talk about an interesting side effect of the election instead. Gordon also chose my birthday to make the announcement – meaning yet again that story was knocked off the front page!

Anyway, the month running up to the election is known as Purdah, and as well as being a period of no major decisions being made by parliament,  increased regulation on news reporting etc. in the media applies. A further side effect is that the COI (corporate office of mis-information) aren’t allowed to advertise, based on the logic that advertising government initiatives (apart from the election itself) is in part publicity for the sitting government, and thus an unfair advantage.

Now, unlike some – I don’t have a particular problem with COI advertising, despite it occasionally being annoying being told to turn off lights, recycle, do my shoelaces etc (actually I do need the latter) and I should also point out that my present employer, like a lot of the commercial radio industry benefits significantly from COI advertising – yet I do have a problem with a particular advert I’ve heard a lot on the radio these last few weeks.

The advert in question is a Home Office Ad encouraging people to report suspicious behavior to the police – it’s actually quite a clever advert from a script writing point of view, using odd words from the ‘talking heads’ in the ad to make up the overall message – my issue though is with the message itself which seems to be “look out for your neighbors, they might be terrorists”. Ok, so it’s possible that old Mrs Davies at Number 23 is putting together a dirty bomb – and Mr Watson from the corner shop might be plotting to overthrow the government, but both seem unlikely (well the latter possibly not as Mr Watson does have a vote conservative sign in his window – n.b. Mr Watson is  fictional).

My concern is that as soon as you start treating everyone around you with suspicion, you stop treating them like people. I’ve lived in my current block of flats for about 6 months, and have barely shared more than a few words with my neighbors, and I think if I were to try engaging them in more of a conversation than a ‘Hi’ when passing in the car park – they’d probably think I was a bit weird, and start actively avoiding me in future. Worrying isn’t it.

I’m not proud of this fact, but when I get on a tube I’m actually a little nervous if there’s more than a few young asians with tatty rucksacks in the carriage. This is actual insanity on my part as I know full well that in excess of 99.9999999% of people on tube trains are as harmless as I am (if not more harmless) – so why do I react oddly to someone my age, with dark-ish skin and a rucksack like mine. Mostly this is due to the press for making us suspicious of people around us in busy places, but it’s worrying that the government have now jumped on the bandwagon, and are trying to make us suspicious of those who live around us.

There was a time that neighbors all said hello to each other in the street, lent each other sugar and helped others out, that time was gone long before my 90’s upbringing – but we were always civil to those who lived around us, and through a number of fairly complex social connections pretty much everyone on our street was on first name terms (and despite this being Worcestershire, not everyone was whiter than casper) – now it seems we’re supposed to be popping around to Mr Plod if we see ‘er up the road talking to a tall dark stranger, or if that new family by the shop have a car with blacked out windows.

This is stupid, as there are probably innocent explanations for these things – and real terrorists aren’t stupid enough to leave the kind of obvious trail hinted at in the advert. If we actually got to know our neighbors (as I grant you I’ve failed to do) then we’re more likely to spot real signs if something actually suspicious is going on and will feel a lot safer in our homes than the government seem to want us to be.

Right, cheesy ending time – “That’s when good neighbors become good friends”, I’m off now to say hello to one of my neighbors and I don’t care if they think I’m a bit weird!

So, yesterday I got back from the Student Radio Conference in Nottingham – the event proved to be a really enjoyable weekend, with some fantastic sessions – aside from this I probably had the best time I’ve had at a conference since Southampton in 2006 (probably aided by the removal of the stress of organisation from more recent years).

I also had the opportunity to talk to some really interesting, funny and genuinely nice people (not to mention winning the annual pub quiz with Sarah Ghost, Matt Hurst, Martin Steers, Will Jackson & Paul Jackson (who aren’t related).

It’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that radio (particularly at a senior level) is a cut-throat business so it was really nice to be reminded that amongst the shouty bosses and demanding talent are some really nice guys. Whilst I’m sure the following is by no means a complete list of everyone from the industry I chatted to, and certainly does not deliberately exclude anyone – I thought I’d just mention a few names who’d reminded me of the fantastic industry radio is to work in – and also how much of a community the industry can feel like when it comes together.

• David Lloyd – Orion Media.
• Lloydie – Trent FM
• Kevin Hughes – Capital (Who is also the best quizmaster a student radio conference has ever had – Leeds 2009)
• Paul Jackson & Mike Cass – Global (Who stuck around for the SRA Quiz and the party which followed, chatting to students and getting involved, in a way senior types generally don’t)
• Neil Sloan – BBC
• Chris North – Wise Buddah
• Mark Crossley – Absolute Radio
• Tim Howlett – Heart 106.2

and finally Bruce Mitchell, Kiss’ Head of Digital – who we bumped into in the Chicken Shop on the way back from the club on the way back, and chatted to in the hotel bar for an hour or so after we got back, despite the fact he had a 6.30 train the following morning (hope you made it Bruce!).

I also talked to some fantastic students – who prove there’s still a huge passion for all areas of radio and some who’ve definitely got the talent and the confidence to go a long way in the industry.

Hopefully I’ll get myself along to next years conference in one capacity or anther – as I had a fantastic time this year, and it’d be great to do it all over again!

Here’s a little streetview of the conference venue if you happen to be interested…

So, the guardian have yesterday published the shock news that nearly half of people starting work in a media job begin by working for free, I’m not entirely sure why either the newspaper or Skillset who produced the research are surprised at this. My first experience within a professional radio company was unpaid (two weeks work experience with global radio) and almost everyone I know who’ve gone on from student radio to working in the industry have done so through similar circumstances. I was extremely grateful for the opportunity to work in a professional environment with equipment far superior to that I got to play with in student radio.

The thing I don’t understand is what Skillset think is wrong with this, no employer is going to recruit someone without the skills or experience they’re looking for – or at least some obvious sign of the dedication or foundations needed to achieve these skills. All employers are the same in this case, there’s a good chance you’ll have to do some work-experience to get to the level employers are looking for. In a past life when I was destined to become a Chemical Engineer, I wasn’t paid as I gained some of the skills needed to work in this industry – in fact I was paying for the privilege. This is called a degree, and I don’t see the papers suggesting these are exploiting innocent students by charging an obscene amount of money for what amounts to subsidising the research of aging academics, whilst occasionally being rambled at by said academics or worse still cheap post-docs who struggle with the concept of the English language (let alone thermodynamics). As is often said, there’s no set route into media – some go down the degree route, others from voluntary/community radio, others purely through work experience type roles – all of these have a part to play.

Further to this, the idea that to gain the experience to work in an industry you’ll end up working for free somewhere along the line is hardly unique to media – my girlfriend has just landed a short term contract working as an ecologist, about 10 months after graduating from a biology degree. She found it hard to even get an interview for a paid position before peppering her CV with internships and work-experience. It’s a vicious circle, when the job market is competitive every employer is looking for some experience of a similar job – but until you’ve had a job you wont have that experience – work experience offers a chance to do that.

As for the idea that the best people might not find themselves working in the industry because they don’t get the ‘foot in the door’ – I shall misquote Thomas Edison and say that Creativity is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration – in any job you’re going to need to work hard and be willing to take on a number of things, possibly with quite long hours (commercial radio is well known for this) – the dedication to make contacts and get placements etc. should confirm you’re likely to put this kind of effort in for an employer.

Incidentally – if you are interested in getting experience within the radio industry, The Student Radio Association has a vary nice opportunities page (wot I wrote) featuring paid and unpaid positions, and also a couple of sites it’s worth a nose around if your interested in structured work experience such as that offered by the BBC.

Having said all of the above, one further piece of advice – don’t let yourself be exploited by being too willing to work for free. At some point you’re going to want to convert this unpaid work into an actual job, right – and the longer you work for free – the more likely you are to be taken for granted. Don’t stay anywhere too long, participate in structred schemes where possible and make sure you’re getting something out of it; making contacts, learning skills or whatever. Once you’re in a position that you can do whatever it is your doing blindfolded – the role is no longer any use to you as experience – at this point you need to start asking if there’s any paid work going within the station – if there’s not, stick it on your CV (along wit ha nice bullet-point list of the skills learned) and either get applying for jobs, or move on to do work experience somwhere else – allowing you to further increase that skills list, and making you an even tastier prospect for a potential employer.

After giving all that advice I feel a bit like Quindon Tarver having read the excellent monologue for Baz Luhrmann’s Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) – for that reason (and naturally completely off topic) I’ll leave you with the last Stanza of that monologue originally from a New York Times article by Mary Schmich (the full lyrics are here)…

Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the
ugly parts and recycling it for more than
it’s worth. But trust me on the sunscreen…

(Photo: Florian on Flickr)

So, The Times and Sunday Times have today announced they’ll be charging for content on their websites (note the link is to the guardian, I’m not paying…!) to me this is interesting news. It’s been in the pipeline for a while now, with News Corp’s intention being to move all their online newspaper content into a subscription model over the coming year.

I’m not for a second going to dispute the paper’s right to charge for content – people have to be paid to write it, and it costs the company money to put it on the internet, plus the newspaper’s “old media” audience have paid for it for years, I guess you could argue it’s unfair for them if they’re subsidising an increasingly large number of people who just go and read the news online for free. My real question is who’s going to pay for it? As I mentioned – the “old media” audience are already paying, and presumably are quite happy with the platform on which they’re receiving the news (otherwise they’d have been getting it online already, for free). Anyone else is perfectly able to look at the huge number of other websites (a number of them rival newspapers, not to mention by far the best news agency in the UK, The BBC) who aren’t insisting on a subscription, or better still use a news aggregator (like google news) to give them a huge choice of sources for a particular story.

So, who’s going to pay the pound a day, or 2 pounds a week (which I agree isn’t a lot of money if it proves to be a decent service as Murdoch has promised) – the answer has to be those who enjoy the things they can only get in the Times, specifically the opinion columnists. The times actually has some fairly good columns with some familiar faces, and some experts sharing informed opinions (alongside some utter drivel as well, but that’s comment!) and if anyone’s going to pay for The Times Online it’ll be those who really enjoy reading these columns each week.

But will they, that’s really the question – and one which only time will tell. As for me, I’m ok as the three columns I actually read on a semi-regular basis (Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell and Bad Science as you’re interested) are all in The Guardian/Observer – who (as far as I’m aware) have no plans to start charging at the time of writing…

(incidentally – recommendations of other comment based reading welcomed!)

(Photo: tripu on flikr)

So, I thought I’d post a fantastic video which I came across on Mercia’s website a couple of weeks ago (the video, and the post on Mercia date back to the beginning of the year – never behind the times me…!) – it mash-up is however brilliant, featuring the biggest selling 25 songs in the US from 2009 – all mixed into 1 big song by a really clever bloke called DJ earworm. Not only is it a bloody clever bit of production, but it also works pretty well as a song. See what you make of it….

(Incidentally I like half the songs in the Mash-Up more in this than their original form!)

So, radio today has today announced the closure of yet more small commercial radio stations, although in this case the article does imply there may be hope for the stations survival.

I’m not going to comment too much on the circumstances involved in the closure of the stations as I don’t know enough about it, and unlike some posters on digital spy I’m not going to pretend I do and risk any defamation accusations. Suffice to say the stations involved (Bath FM, Brunel FM, 3tr FM and Quaywest) have been through a rocky few years with several successive parent companies going into administration, and the inevitable knock on effect on-air leading to an almost constantly changing presenter team and I’d assume fairly low morale for all involved.

The Radio Today article also states that there’s rumours the stations may have been bought by the owners of Star 107.5 in Cheltenham – another station which has had a slightly rough ride over the years. As far as I can see, if true, this is probably a good thing for the stations involved.

I’m going to use Bath FM as an example, as after nearly 5 years living in it’s TSA (and hypothetically competing for audience) it’s the station/market I know the most about. The one thing Bath doesn’t really have is a local station serving its community – Heart/GWR have always provided the city with a local opt out at breakfast from their Bristol studios, with the city being an afterthought at most – and the BBC tag Bath content onto their Somerset and Bristol services, neither of which really serves the 83,992 people apparently living there.

There are however a few success stories of uber local stations doing pretty well against bigger rivals, because they’re better able to form strong links with their comunity. Jack FM in Oxfordshire, despite being a jukebox station for 21 hours a day, has found a really good niche for itself by having really strong local news and events information (the station had quite a nice write up from MG today in fact) likewise Rugby FM has always proved popular with the locals – largely by having one thing it’s rivals don’t have and that’s “Rugby”right at the heart of it’s brand. Neither Jack or Rugby have so far had any big rivals quivering with their RAJAR results – but both have found themselves a nice little share of the market and seem to be surviving nicely.

All of this brings me back around to Bath FM, and presumably it’s sister stations – if someone does happen to pick up the stations, for my money what they need if they’re going to succeed is to re-inject local into the stations. This is why I think the team behind Star 107.5 might just be a good thing for them. With their Cheltenham station they’ve proven that they’re not afraid to try things out with programming (while this leads to a slightly quirky program schedule), they’ve brought a big local name back to the air, taken the station out into the community with their fleet of various promo vehicles, and are behaving like a proper local radio station. I think this might just work in Bath, it’d need a lot of promotion, careful music programming and a willingness from the management to play a long game (Bath’s RAJARs have rather died since TLRC sold them) – but a station in Bath, called Bath which actually talks about Bath – might just have what it takes to snatch success from the jaws of disaster.

(Photo: DanielVDM on Flikr)

So, this is a slightly odd post to start a blog with – as I’m beginning at the end, next Wednesday will see the end of my formal involvement in student radio after 6 years. I thought I’d use the opportunity to look back at that time (without being too self indulgent hopefully) and at why student radio is a really important part of both the radio industry and university life.

My student radio journey started in my freshers’ week in 2004 when I tuned my little bedside radio into 1449AM URB, and being a little bit of a radio anorak (something which has definitely developed in the last 6 years) and there were a few things I thought could be improved…

I signed up straight away, and within a couple of weeks I was producing music positioners and training to present a show. A few months later I was involved in upgrading all of the stations computer equipment and planning marketing for the next freshers’ week. Here lies the first thing which for my money is brilliant about student radio, anyone can get involved – and it provides the opportunity to experience every element of running a fully working radio station. In my 4 years at URB I had a shot at marketing, commercial production, engineering, broadcast it, presenting (with varying degrees of success), scheduling, management, creating features and even laying carpet in the studios as part of a major refurb. There’s not many places in the radio industry where you get a chance to be a genuine all rounder, playing a part in every area of the operation – and the opportunity to develop new skills and work with fantastic people along the way is one I’d really urge anyone to take if they get the chance.

As well as an opportunity to have a go at stuff I could never have done anywhere else, student radio (along with the other groups I was involved in through my university career) provided me with an escape from uni when the degree was becoming a bit stressful or I became fed up with housemates etc. Having watched a number of people who didn’t have this escape letting stress of coursework and revision get to them, or just going plain mad – I’d advise anyone starting out on a university degree to find something outside their course to do (even if Radio isn’t your thing; Dance, Sport, even dressing up as Lord of The Rings characters… it takes all sorts!). I once joked to a conference that the split between my degree and radio was about 70:30 – while that was possibly a slight exaggeration, the time spent in the studios certainly kept me sane (ish) and coupled with the above helped inform my eventual career choice…

As well as the benefits for the students involved Student Radio also has major benefits for Universities. Through my work with the Student Radio Association I’ve had the chance to listen to some of the impressive content student radio produces. I’ve heard some really cutting edge journalism, covering elections and other major events on campus, I’ve heard really entertaining and informative drama and documentaries squarely targeted at the student audience, and I’ve heard some of the most informed and passionate music programming I’ve come across outside the now sadly condemned 6 Music. Obviously alongside this there’s some unpleasant filler, and some absolute rubbish from people that just want to turn up and mess around – but that’s the world of voluntary radio, when you have the sort of diversity within student radio, some of it’s not going to make the grade (and more so if you were to chuck off everyone who was rubbish you’d deprive people of the opportunities discussed previously). I’ve always said student radio is unique in this way – drawing all of the people involved from the community it’s designed to serve, and constantly freshening up the teams involved (most people involved have 3/4 years of student radio before graduating) even so called ‘community radio’ is often (though not always) run by a committee of people for a community without considering getting any members of that community involved – these are the stations that usually fail.

As for the advantages of student radio for the radio industry, well – I’ll leave that for the industry:

Student radio not only provides a great service to its community of listeners, it is an absolute hotbed of future talent for our industry, both on and off air.

Not my words but those of Ashley Tabor – CEO of Global Radio, words which have been echoed by other senior figures in the radio industry including Andy Parfitt (Controller, Radio 1).

So in summary, Student Radio not only gave me a fantastic 6 years of participating in it, and eventually representing it – but it also provides an incredible experience and opportunity for anyone who gets involved, and gives universities a brilliant entertainment, news and music service and provides the radio industry with the creative and off air talent it badly needs if radio is to have any future.

Thanks to all the brilliant people I’ve got to know through student radio, and to all of those who’ve helped me in all my different roles over the years – it’s been great fun!

(I should add – I’m not going for any particular reason, apart from I feel I’ve done my bit in student radio, and it’s time to move over and let someone else get on with it!)