Radio Programing and Production

  Planning A Radio Show Sonia Randhawa

Basic facts

• Know your time limit
• Remember that you need to keep the programme aurally interesting – intersperse music and dialogue.
• Think about how people listen to radio (what time of day your programme will be broadcast)

  So, what does the audience want?

  What do the listeners want? How do you know?

• – Surveys – Interviews – Focus groups

  So, what do the community want?

  What do the community want? How do you know?

• – Surveys – Interviews – Focus groups THIS IS ALL PART OF PLANNING

  Okay, then what? Types of programme:

• News • Drama • Feature • Talk show
• Music

  A Magazine Show

  What are the resources you need?

• People • Studio • Editing suite
• TIME

A Magazine Show

  How is the show structured? What are the important components?

  A Magazine Show

  How is the show structured? What are the important components?

• Music • Feedback • Same time, same place…

  A Magazine Show Why will your show fail?

• Boring…
• Dificult to understand
• Nasty music
• Nasty announcer
• Uninteresting topic

Things to remember…

• Radio is personal
• Radio is SOUND
• Radio is warm, emotional
• Radio entertains
• Can cross seas, mountains
• Radio’s instant

• • Radio reaches people who can’t read

Conclusion

  Planning a show, you need to be aware of your CONSTITUENCY, who the show is for…

  You need a format for the show You need the resources…

  Field Interviews Sonia Randhawa

Contents

• Where are you going to have an interview?
• Planning an interview
• Conducting a feld interview

  Where to have the interview

  Where to have the interview

  Where to have the interview

• Look around you for distractions

  & for problems

• Record some ‘atmos’
• Check the atmos with your

  HEADPHONES on…

  Interviewing in the feld

• What do you need?

  Interviewing in the feld

• What do you need?
• – Recorder – Wires (do they work?)
• – Microphone (is it appropriate?)
• – Spare batteries
• – Spare tape/ MDs
• – Headphones
Interviewing in the feld

• Keep control!
• Don’t give away the mic
• Mic handling

Power & You

• Think about the power relations between you and the interviewee
• How does this change if you’re addressing a Cabinet Minister?
• Or a victim of domestic violence?
• How can YOU make a diference?

  

Care of your equipment

Hold your mics properly Don’t put any strain on fimsy sockets

• • Have SOMETHING that can hold them steady (if

  possible)

  • Ideally, don’t pull the jacks in and out constantly.

  

BUT if they are not being held steady, DO NOT

travel with your cables connected.

• Clean your tape heads regularly.

  And read your manuals, so that if something

  News-Writing for Radio

  Sonia Randhawa

Introduction

  1. Recap: Writing for print

  2. Radio – Basics of what radio is

  3. How to do a re-write

  4. Writing in a script

Recap: Writing for print

  1. Answering the Five Ws and One H:

Who, what, where, when, why and how

  2. The inverted pyramid Your lead is the most important sentence in your story.

  You have to forget BOTH of these

  Recap: Writing for print

  Other bits & pieces:

• Age • Numbers • Titles

Radio: What is it?

  What is radio? Basically radio is sound. We listen to radio – there are NO visual clues, there are NO re-runs.

Radio: What is it?

  How do people listen to radio? What do people want from radio? This varies, but there are two basic needs – functional and emotional

  Radio: What is it?

  Are people really listening?

  

Radio: What is it?

  Principles for radio news:

• Don’t lecture – you’re talking to an equal
• Be clear – you don’t get to repeat, the listener can’t re-read what you’ve said

  Radio: What is it? Rules for radio news:

• You can’t aford to lose your listener’s attention
• Your listener isn’t listening
• You have to be up-to-date

• • You may not give all the 5 W’s and

  the H

Doing a re-write

  Step One: Understand the story If the information you’re given is not suficient, fnd more information!

Doing a re-write

  Problems with re-writes: 1. The source didn’t write for radio.

  2. Information may be biased/ unreliable.

  3. Inappropriate style.

  

To overcome these, you need to not just

Doing a re-write

  Step One: Understand the story Step Two: Tear it apart! Step Three: Keep your sentences Subject-Verb-Object.

  Step Four: KISS Step Five: Figures

Doing a re-write

  Step Six: Read it out loud

This is THE most important part. Can

you read it and does it sound natural?

  

Is this how you would talk to a friend?

Is each word a word you would normally use?

  Doing a re-write Things NOT to do:

• • Useless bridging words e.g. Meanwhile

  <grr>
• Which & that
• The time is NOW
• Ages

  When was the last time you heard someone

  say, “The teacher, 43, was murdered.” Unlikely. “The 43-year-old teacher was

  Doing a re-write

  Things NOT to do: • Useless bridging words e.g.

  Meanwhile <grr>

• Which & that
• The time is NOW
• Ages

Doing a re-write

  

Winging it – No ‘ings’ at the beginning

of a sentence.

  At the start of the sentence a verb ending in ‘ing’ causes the sentence to lose power.

e.g. Running up the hill, Jack fell down

Doing a re-write

  Cut the fab! ‘In order to’ ‘Actually’ ‘In fact’ These are unnecessary in print and

Doing a re-write

  

Don’t make assumptions – is it really

a surprise? Is it really unsurprising? Same goes for ‘expected’, ‘unexpectedly’ etc.

  

And don’t assume something is good

or bad news – not all your

Doing a re-write

  Signs of something wrong: The words ‘continuing’, ‘once more’,

  ‘again’. Why is this story news if it has happened before? e.g The sun continues to rise.

Doing a re-write The weakness of be-ing

  If there is an ‘is’ or an ‘are’ in your frst sentence, you can probably make it stronger.

  Feature writing Sonia Randhawa As one child said, "I like radio because the pictures are better."

  

Introduction

• Sound conveys meaning.

• Sound stimulates our visual imagination: it creates visual images in our minds.
• Radio Theater is telling a story by the careful mixing of sounds - both verbal and non-verbal.

Introduction (cont.)

• Radio is a "hot" medium - that is, the

  listener's imagination and experience are

  involved in giving the story depth, substance and meaning.
• Sound efects describe the circumstances of a dramatic audio situation. They can be

  used for such things as setting and place,

  conveying action, solving certain narrative

  problems, and evoking characterizations.

Planning the script

• What do you want to create?
• Whose point of view (POV) are you using – the main character? An omniscient narrator?

  

Planning the Script

• What do you want to create?
• – DIALOGUE is the most important tool
• – ACTUALITIES/ Music are the next most important
• – SFX are the LEAST important tool
• Whose point of view (POV) are you using – the main character? An

  e.g. “I’m late for a lunch date” tells you

  

Planning the Script

• What do you want to create?
• – DIALOGUE is the most important tool Note that dialogue can tell the audience the details that are given by pictures on television.

  Planning the SFX SFX are the LEAST important tool, BUT:

• – They can RUIN an otherwise excellent script
• – They can make an otherwise dull script passable

• – They can make a good script GREAT

Walla

• These are crowd noises
• How do you create them?
• What problems might you have?

Where to fnd SFX

  Find digital SFX at: www.fashkit.com www.soundfx.com www.wavcentral.com www.ljudo.com

  Audacity

Sonia Randhawa

  Contents Setting up

• Go to File - Preferences

  Setting up

  

Setting up

• Choose the appropriate bit depth (16) and sample rate (44100 Hz).

  NOTE: Sometimes Audacity doesn’t work well with 16 bit depth, so you may need to use 32 instead. Do it!

  Recording

• Hit the record button!

  Editing

  You have six tools you can use – cursor, envelope, draw, zoom,

Editing

  To cut, copy, paste – use the cursor tool as you would in Word!

You can insert silence by highlighting

an area, then going to Generate,

then to Silence (everything moves).

If you want to choose a particular bit

of a track, highlight it, choose Edit

and Split.

  Exit

Exit

• Make sure you’re on the right settings (ie 16 bit, 44100Hz)
• Go to File, choose Export in the format you want (might not be able to export as MP3).

  Your Equipment Sonia Randhawa

Contents

• Digital and analog
• Analog recorders
• Digital recorders
• Which mic?
• What’s an XLR?
• Taking care of your equipment

Digital vs Analog

  There are basically two main types of recorders:

• Digital - Analog

  Analog - Problems

• Fidelity • Generations • Deterioration over time

Digital

  Digital recording basically transforms the sound waves into a series of numbers.

  How and why bother?

Digital

  How and why bother?

  Digital recording basically transforms the sound waves into a series of numbers.

• High fdelity

  Analog recorders What are you looking for?

• • A socket where you can plug your mic in

• • A monitor, where you can see how loud

  the sound is when it goes into the recorder
• Something portable
• Something easy to use
• Headphone socket

  Analog recorders

  Advantages of analog

• Reliable • Easy to get tapes
• Low maintenance • Easy to use, and fairly idiot-proof.

Digital recorders

  Various types, most important for journos are:

• DAT
• Minidisc or MD

Digital recorders

  What you need:

• Sampling rate of 44.1 kHz (that’s 44100 Hz)
• a mic socket
• ideally, some way to control loudness

Digital recorders - MDs

• Cheap • Easy-ish to use
• Digital – ie high fdelity, no loss of generations, high quality

• • Can NOW download sound direct via

  USB port (HD MD players)

  Digital recorders - MDs

• Watch out for your TOC (Table of

  Contents)

• – Stop recording frequently
• – Make sure your battery lives Get rid of the STUPID lavalier mic!!! Some data compression (but not

  Microphones (Mics)

  Choices you have to make

• Condenser or dynamic
• Pick-up pattern
• Large or small What you choose will depend on

  Microphones

Dynamic vs Condenser

  Dynamic mics… • Need no external power.

• Durable.
• Handle high volumes well.

  Microphones Dynamic vs Condenser

  Condenser mics…

• Require phantom power
• Fragile • Louder output

  Microphones

Directional vs Omnidirectional

  Simple… Directional go in a direction Omnidirectional pick up everything What does this mean for you as a reporter?

  Microphones Directional

  There are diferent types of directional mics

• Most common are cardioid (heart- shaped)
• Figure-of-8 (bi-directional) • And others….

  

Mixer

  The mixer allows you to take diferent sound channels and, um, mix them.

• Mic inputs
• Line inputs
• Outputs

  

Care of your equipment

Hold your mics properly Don’t put any strain on fimsy sockets

• • Have SOMETHING that can hold them steady (if

  possible)

  • Ideally, don’t pull the jacks in and out constantly.

  

BUT if they are not being held steady, DO NOT

travel with your cables connected.

• Clean your tape heads regularly.

  And read your manuals, so that if something

   Lecture Three

Interviewing for Broadcast

Sonia Randhawa

Planning the Interview

• What do you want from the interview
• Can the interviewee give you that?
• What are you going to ask?
• How are you going to start?
• How are you going to end?

  

Planning the Interview

• An intro: “Kuala Lumpur was cloaked in haze today. Radiq Radio reporter Sonia Randhawa is talking to Dr Chan to fnd out how this afects our health.”

  Or “I’m Sonia Randhawa, interviewing

  Dr Chan of University Malaysia on

  Planning the Interview

• An outro: “That was Dr Chan explaining how the haze is afecting our health. Back to Nara at the studio.”

  Choosing the interviewee

• Before you start, talk to the interviewee

  What are you looking for?

  Choosing the interviewee

• Before you start, talk to the interviewee

  What are you looking for?

• What do they sound like?

  Choosing the interviewee

• Before you start, talk to the interviewee

  What are you looking for?

• What do they sound like?
• Are they interesting?

  Choosing the interviewee

• Before you start, talk to the interviewee

  What are you looking for?

• What do they sound like?
• Are they interesting?

Doing the Interview

• Keep calm
• Ask SHORT questions – your interviewee can’t wriggle out of them!

• • Make sure you can be understood –

  no jargon

• • Stick to your pre-scripted questions

  

Doing the Interview

• Don’t just rely on the recorded interview

• – Take notes with PEN AND PAPER!

>Remember the TOC edit/ write
• Remember to take blank ‘atmos’ again if there is a massive change in the sound around you.

  After the Interview

• Have you got what you wanted?
• – Content – Quality – Quantity Is this all you need? What follow-up is there?

  After the Interview

• How could you have improved with the interview?
• – A better interviewee?
• – More preparation?
• – Clearer questions?
• – Better questions?
• – Clarity of voice?
• – Venue?

  After the interview

• Transcribe your interview – write it out!

  

After the interview

• Edit the interview – if you’re using an MD you can mark of the sound-bites you want to use.

Interviewing in the studio

• Equipment isn’t as a big a deal!
• Water!
• Sound checks

  

Interviewing in the studio

• Making your guest feel comfortable:
• Introduce to the studio
• Explain how to behave
• Tell them how to speak