Well, as the title suggests, I immediately clicked the new post button as soon as I saw the date of the posting of my previous post and posited that I should post a new post.
I'm currently presenting a new drive-time show on a community station which has been going incredibly well. At first, it was a slow start and it was like powering up the Amstrad - I had to give it about 10 minutes (in this case I wasn't playing Daley Thompson or Bomb Jack). But after a while, it started to flourish and all my shows since have been some of my best. So what sparked my interest in radio?
Well, there are a number of reasons. I had always been a fan of movies but never enough to call myself a movie buff. I loved and still love computer games, though perhaps not as much as I used to. But that was all a very passive, hypodermic-needle model, do-whatever-the-telly-tells-me existence. The very beginning of my foray into working in media was the Media Studies course at the college up the road. I had a great teacher and I found it much more interesting than the other courses. I took the course in my 2nd year and thus, I felt like I was more dominant than my classmates. I had a year on them at the college and to them, I was a guru, a sage, a master of mise-en-scene analysis; the progeny of media itself. The aura about me as I entered the classroom in an old hoodie and baggy jeans was always momentous; you could hear a pin drop. No-one really carried pins and I don't know anyone who does to this day, but should there have been a pin present in the classroom and pushed over from a place that would constitute the pin being in a dropworthy position, then yes, that pin would have made an absolute racket in the environment I created.
My love for the media, in it's broader sense, was strong enough for me to pick it as a subject at university, imagining that I would one day be a reporter like they used to have in the old days (see Boardwalk Empire reporters for reference to cool cliché) with one of those hats they used to wear with a label on it. Mine would say 'Entertainment Reporter' as I would approach someone noteworthy enough for taking notes in my little flippy notebook. I'd go there in a suit, which would be covered in a trench coat, buttoned enough to see the lapels, shirt and tie of the beautiful attire underneath. Sadly, these delusions of grandeur dissipated into the air they came from after one lesson of 'Journalism'. What a complete bore. One activity given in this lesson was: 'Write any news story you want. It can be about anything. Absolutely anything. It's got to be interesting and get my attention with the headline and well-written afterwards. Oh, and it has to be a breaking news story'. I'm para-phrasing but that was mainly it. So I thought for about 15 seconds, after which I had a 'Eureka!' moment. My article was as good as written. The opening lines of it would be something like: 'The Prince of Wales was attacked in a hit-and-run last night'. Now, I've got nothing against him; in fact, he seems like a good chap, but the whole point was to be interesting. After finishing the article and handing to the lecturer, she said 'No, not possible. You'd need to await confirmation from the royal family'. So she had technically lied. We couldn't write about anything. My lecturer couldn't even let down the wall of ennui long enough for her to crack a smile or even go 'Okay yeah, that's pretty big news. Well done'. But no, it wasn't. I slumped back into the chair which had probably been slumped into more than once by my predecessors.
So I eventually got round to radio and I loved it. The live dynamic and small team meant that I didn't have to rely on too many people to get it right. I was in my element again. Presenting, producing, editing; you name it, I did it. And successfully. I even got great feedback from the Creative Producer of Global Radio for my advert, which was an advert to sell a radio. To sell a radio on a radio advert was tough but this man said that my idea would be good enough for their stations. And I have since worked on a more freelance basis and it's certainly picking up.
But now it's just getting it to a full-time job. And I tell you, it's blummin' hard.
