Reflections.

Over the past 3 months I have been working on a group project as part of my Broadcast Media course at Bath Spa University.

The main aim of the project, was to produce a radio show or Podcast, the theme of which was up to the group. Me and group partner Ved, decided to do a Live music session podcast, called "Wired4Sound".

We found a really good band to use for this production, 'The Apostates' - their music was great, and they did a really good interview (we ended up with almost an hour of material!).

I think me and Ved worked very well together, we held regular production meetings and where always organised and new exactly what we where doing.
I think we worked well together when it came to the editing. It can sometimes be awkward when you have more than one person sat in front of a computer screen - with one person 'assuming' the role of editor, rather than working as a group.
This wasn't the case though, me and Ved (I felt) communicated well with every aspect of the production.

For the portfolio write - up, which accompanied the podcast, me and Ved split the work in two. I felt that this worked well, with both of us fulfilling our quotas well. I am just as happy with the portfolio, as I am with the actual podcast itself.

Overall, I really enjoyed the project. It has given me much more enthusiasm regarding the upcoming projects that make up the rest of the course. I hope that any other group efforts will work out as well as they did with me and Veds Podcast production.

It is also my understanding that I am no longer required to use this blog as part of the course, but I have enjoyed this process (I am new to blogs), so I think I will continue it - maybe broadening the range of topics I post on.

Presentation time!

Hello dear reader!

Hope you have enjoyed my blogs so far..
The following is some presentations I have created in the past several months.

| View | Upload your own

| View | Upload your own

NEWSDESK & A HAPPY NEW YEAR !

Welcome to my first blog of 2008! Its a double whammy this week as I am also hosting the groups weekly Newsdesk, enjoy!

First up, the popular internet networking site myspace.com is once again in the media spotlight.


Last week, a new service was announced that will allow celebrities to interact with fans through their very own myspace page. Up until now, fans of certain celeb's where unable to be sure that they where actually leaving messages to the genuine article or one of the many impersonators that have infiltrated the site.


The initial take up of the service has been strong with famous names such as Britney Spears, Leonardo DiCaprio and Paris Hilton amongst others already signed up. For more information on this story please click THIS link where Lance explains further.



Another internet related story on this weeks newsdesk comes courtesy of Will .
BT Vision, is a UK based service provided by (as the name suggests) British Telecommunications that allows a freeview-like Digital television service that is delivered via a broadband connection. Until now, it has just been available to conventional PC/Mac users but last week BT announced that the service is being extended to allow Microsoft Xbox 360 users to take advantage of the service through their games machines.
However, as Will mentions in his BLOG - the service being provided to the Xbox is not as feature rich as the regular BT Vision mode of delivery.

While Talking about Microsoft, it is also worth mentioning that Bill Gates - Owner & CEO of Redmond co. (Microsoft) talked out about how new technology is soon going to change the way in which users interact with computer based media.
In an interview with Roy Cellan-Jones on behalf of the BBC news, Gates predicted that the traditional keyboard and mouse where a thing of the past. The sense of touch, vision and speech interfaces would become increasingly important, said Microsofts number one.

"This whole idea of what I call natural user interface is really redefining the experience"

"Were adding the ability to touch and manipulate, were adding vision so the computer can see what you are doing, were adding the pen, were adding the speech.."

It comes as no suprise to me that Mr Gates is speaking out about this technology now, as 2008 is the year in which Microsoft next big project - "The surface" is released - which is a table-like touch sensitive computer that can understand the human voice.


I think that although this technology is already here in the mainstream, in the form of the Nintendo Wii - it has yet to be utilised in a wider range of media. I think in regards to the new media, that these new (ish) technologys are really exiting and will offer us a lot of genuinally new experiences. I think it will be especially interesting to see how advertisers and online media streaming companies will respond and utilise this.


Taking place in Las Vegas all this week is the Consumer Electric Show. The aim of the show is too introduce the world to the hottest new equipment available to joe public.
Highlights of the show included in-car internet and 150ft HD television screens.
Much more information about the show can be found on Mikes Blog along with some personal comments.



"Britannia High " is the name of a new show in production under ITV, which combines a stage-school drama, behind-the scenes real-life documantry and a revue final.
It is known that Gary Barlow, of ex-boyband group 'Take That' and Strictly come Dancing judge Arlene Phillips are taking on the roles of presenters and tutors to the contestents.
Further details on the show can be found HERE.


Media company EMAP last week sold its business-to-business division to Guardian Media Group and Apex (which is a private equity firm) for 1bn dollars. It is believed that both companies will run their new aquisitition together.
Please check out VED's BLOG for more information, and personal thoughts on this story.

UK Net Users demand film downloads..Newdesk.

In a recent survey conducted by Broadbandchoices.co.uk, it has been revealed that 61% of UK internet users where most interested in having the ability to download DVD quality movies quickly.
UK users voted this feature in favour over video calls, High Definition video and home surveillence. The survey was carried out in an attempt to find what consumers wanted from the next generation of broadband technology. The survey also made uneasy reading for Internet service providers, as 60% of those questioned stated that they would not be prepared to pay extra for the faster transfer speeds.

Interestingly, it seems that the result of this survey are a little contradictory - as watching television and downloading movies appears (according to the survey) to be something that users currently spend less time doing over the week than other, more traditional activities such as E-mails and general browsing.

An explanation to this "could be the that the current services are not at a high enough standard/speed to warrant using video services. If (transfer) speeds were improved, consumers are more likely to use broadband to stream TV and download movies." said Michael Philips, who is product director at BroadBandChoices.co.uk.

Regulator Ofcom is in the middle of a consultation on the issue of future net services while MPs hosted a Westminster eForum on the issue two weeks ago, which was followed up by a broadband summit, hosted by minister for competitiveness Stephen Timms.
The issue hinges on whether the UK is falling behind the rest of the world, where fibre networks capable of delivering speeds of up to 100Mbps are starting to become commonplace.
In South Korea, one of the world's most advanced nations when it comes to super-fast broadband, some 90% percent of homes can get connections between 50 and 100Mbps.

Virgin Media has pledged to upgrade its cable network - which reaches more than 50% of the population - by the end of next year while BT is considering the option of rolling out a limited fibre network. There are many who think the most important job is to sort out current broadband speeds, where there is a huge disparity between advertised speeds and the speeds people are actually getting.

A report from consumer group Which earlier in the year found that some customers on so-called 8Mbps packages actually get less than 1Mbps.

Ofcom's own speeds tests found that the average customer got 39% of their promised speed.

BBC's £100m Local news drive goes on. _ newsdesk week3

The BBC is pressing ahead with proposals to invest £100m in new local text and radio broadband services.
Appearing in front of the Lords communications select committee today, the BBC director general, Mark Thompson, reiterated the fact that a lower-than-expected licence fee will mean the corporation will not launch local broadband television services.

Thompson then went further to say that "actually Local Radio, complemented by the web is probably a complete solution"..

In regards to these new services, users will be able to personalise the sites around news and sport and again, according to Mr Thompson, the services are to be 'Map-based'.

Viewers of BBC programmes such asd 'Coast' will be able to type in their postcode and find places to visit near them that have been featured in the series.

Newsdesk (week 2 - Jake)

Rival TV Companies to form On-Demand Media Streaming Service.

Telvision companies Channel4 , ITV and the BBC are about to unveil plans to launch a new on-demand online streaming service.

The as-of-yet unnamed service, which is hoping to go live in 2008, will dwarf the current UK TV streaming services available at present. As the service will carry both old and current material in its archives it will hold many thousands of hours of content.
What is yet unknown, however is what media player(s) the new service will depend on - and if (the much controversial) 'DRM' anti-copy technology from Microsoft will be applied to it .
Interestingly, all three channels involved in this project have already launched their own channel specific streaming services, with each one having its own problems and luke-warm reception.
ITV and the BBC have already confirmed that there own services, iPlayer and ITV.com will continue to exist and serve to 'compliment' the new joint venture service.
Channel 4 however, have announced that their own streaming service, '4oD', will be dropped once properly integrated into the new project.

The project has been hailed as an "Historic Partnership" between the competing companies - by the chief executive of BBC Worldwide John Smith. ITV's executive chairman, Michael Grade, said that new service will be "an important shop window for UK broadcasters, and a great destination for viewers"
Channel 4's chief executive, Andy Duncan has said that this service will "give viewers total control over what they watch and when they watch it".

I will be watching this unfold with great interest.

BBC BRISTOL

Last week, me and for other students from Bath Spa University's Broadcast Media course where given the opportunity of a whistle-stop tour through the department responsible for BBC Bristol's 'Points West' daily news program.


It was very enjoyable and an eye-opener. The tour started in the main (open plan) offices that contained the news reporters, presenters, internet/ceefax reporters workstations.
The first thing that hit you when you first entered this huge room, was the 'Hustle and Bustle' of the place - it was immediately obvious that a lot was being done, and at a very rapid pace.



I found the first talk we had with the Weather Presenter particulary interesting. The Weatherman is responsible for producing his own segment - including content, scripting and graphics. The vast amount of information regarding the weather is gained from the MET Office, and fed into the Weatherman's server. It is then his responsibility to then strip out what is nessercary to the Region, and to produce the appropriate graphics to get across this information to the viewer in the best possible way. The Weather is a very important component to the regional news, as apart from being of high interest to the viewer, it is also the most flexible in regards to its duration. If the show is running a few minutes ahead or behind, it is quite easy, or should I say easier, to take from or add to the weather. As a result of this the Weather presenter is not 100% of his shows duration and absolute content until very close to broadcast time.
The regional Internet news (and Ceefax) offices where also very Interesting. The man we spoke to at the time (I forget his name) explained how they would constantly scan for news coming in to their servers (from a few sources), and how they would decide what they were going to use. The news story would then be edited by him - to maybe change poor grammar and/or spelling, or to shorten the length of the piece in order to allow it to fit into its alloted space on the net. I found this process very impressive - in regards to how streamlined it was, as it allowed the news story's to be processed from the BBC's servers, edited for content and length and then posted on the Internet and Ceefax in a matter of minutes. I was also very impressed when I was told that this role did not require even basic knowledge of web-coding protocols such as 'HTML'.
I also did not realise that BBC regional online news was constantly moving 24 hours a day (which it is).

After speaking to these departments, we were then ushered into the BBC Radio Bristol. I have to say, I was very suprised to see how small this department was! It consisted of a modest reception area and just Two studios. The presenter who was live on-air saw us from his studio and invited us in for an uber-mini live interview! - at which point Will (one of us), choked with embarrassment, almost forgot his own name! After our 15 seconds of fame, we were taken into the next studio which was not being used, and an off-duty presenter explained the setup to us.
They were using very simple analogue desks, the reason being that the easier simpler it is - the less can go wrong. The music itself was called up on a computer which itself was feeding from a server - and the playlist's were pre-made. That was that, there really was nothing else to it, very simple indeed but it obviously does the job well!

One thing of interest that was pointed out, was the presence of a blue light above the studio door. I'm sure that anybody reading this blog will be aware of the commonly found 'On-Air' red light found in radio stations and recording studio's, but the Blue light is only used in the event of a death in the family. In this situation all normal programming stopped, and all air -time would be focused on this event.
Just below the blue light, was a CD (in it's jewel case) that was mounted to the wall and labelled "Emergency Music". As the name suggests, this CD contained several hours of music and inbetween 'jingles' to keep the station at least on air in case of emergency.
From here we where then led into the 'Points West' studio. Again, like many of the other departments I visited that day, I was suprised by its small size. The studio would be instantly familiar to anybody that has seen the news show on television, whats suprising (at least to me) was the amount of space between each of the studios main parts (Main presenter chair, Interview couch and table, and the Weather) I think that the clever use of camera placement gives the viewer a false impression that the studio is a lot bigger than it is in reality. For example, if the main news presenter was to have stood up from where his seat is and walked forward just a couple of paces - he would have been touching the camera's, and most definitely 'off-set' ! . The amount of lighting equipment present on the studio was also impressive, you could barely see the ceiling through a brick wall of industrial lighting rig.


As by this time, it was getting very close to the lunchtime news broadcast, we were quickly guided through to the gallery. This is where all the magic happens.
I was quickly introduced to another method that I was completely unaware of. Close to broadcast time, when the presenter and gallery have final scripts/cues, they choose to quickly pre-record the opening headline being readout by the presenter. This also allows both parties to make any last-minute changes to the script.
When the show starts these headlines are played back, and the presenter picks up live once they have finished. The atmosphere in the gallery was very professional. I instantly picked up that although (as with any live broadcast) the pressure is high, it was being dealt with properly.
In fact, it was quite bewildering being in a gallery for the first time, as you didn't really know where to look!
At the end of the news show, as normal, was the weather - it was interesting seeing the man we had just spoken to minutes earlier going out live on air with the graphics and scripts he had just shown us.

All in all, it was an extremely interesting day, and I certainly learned a lot. As with my previous trip to the BBC, it has only strengthened my desire to join myself as a runner when I finish University in 2009.

Hope you enjoyed reading! - feel free to comment...;)