(MP3003) Professional Practice - Commercial Radio

I worked in the commercial radio industry for almost five years. I began as many people do, at the bottom. I gained work experience at Star radio, photocopying documents and making tea. What I longed to do was production work and Del who presented the breakfast show was also production manager. Any production job to large for him was farmed out to group production in Bristol. I convinced Del to let me produce the breakfast promos so he could concentrate on other things. I became very skilled at using Cool edit, which was the software the station favoured for production. I was also send out to collect Vox pops for the news desk. At first I hated that job but I discovered I was a natural with the public. This is when I discovered my voice. As my confidence grew so too did my aspirations. I decided I wanted to try presenting and my first assignment was to do a movie segment on breakfast. This was great fun and I enjoyed the interaction between the two presenters, Gazza and Del and myself. I began doing overnight shifts, which is a rite of passage for most presenters. It was tiring but great fun. I would go on air at 2 am and finish at four. A lot of people say they got into radio by accident and this was certainly true for me. I’d been on nightshifts for a few months when I received a call from the station manager, one of the presenters had been in an accident and they needed cover. This was my big chance. Up until now I hadn’t been paid for my work. This was my first paying gig. I did well and started to cover more and more shifts until I was offered my own show on weekend breakfast. During this time I saw many staff come and go from the station. Star radio is considered something of a stepping-stone or launch pad to bigger and better things. That coupled with the low salaries meant that staff loyalty was non-existent. The sales department in particular seemed to suffer from this and despite managements best efforts they were unable to retain staff so although the on air team was strong the sales team was not. All this was at a time when commercial radio’s reach was falling, less and less people were tuning in and less people felt that radio was a viable medium for advertisement. The station made cut backs, staff were made redundant, asked to take pay cuts and people took on more than one role to make their positions within the company tenable. I didn’t escape this and found working at the station more and more stressful. I wasn’t enjoying presenting and hadn’t done any production for years and that was my first love. I weighed up all my options. My belief is that commercial radio is a dying medium. The internet will eventually take over from it completely and although I’m very grateful to Star radio for all the opportunities I’ve been given after a lot of soul searching I decided that it was time for me to leave the station and concentrate on my degree. I hope to marry up my skills as a project worker with my media skills and get into community based media projects with an emphasis on sound recording.