The Josh and Kenny show was, in my mind, TV on the radio. Not radio on the TV. That’s the opposite approach to what we’ve become accustomed to with visualised programmes on Radio 1 and other stations. On the plus side, you’ve got really well produced VTs, perfectly edited features and cool graphics. On the downside, you haven’t got that feeling of ‘liveness’ that you get seeing Moyles/Mills in video.

And then there’s the question of how did it sound. I switched between the live video stream and the Crush Radioplayer during the show. In some places it worked well, in others it was a bit of a disorientating listen.

I think the bottom line is that visualised content still needs to work when the pictures disappear. Otherwise, is it really radio?

Firstly thanks for your blog post, means a lot to both me and Josh that you took the time to view our work. We were a tad astounded with the compliments, but are very happy you were impressed and glad it did entertain in some way (after all, that’s why we done it).

The creation process was a long one! Originally it was an idea that I had before Christmas and began thinking about over the holidays. I have a personal fascination with visualising radio and wanted to see what we could do with it. On returning back to university I spoke to Josh about the idea.

Me and Josh have previously worked together on a show in second year, so we both knew how the other worked, and that show had visual elements too.

We sat down together with a book of ideas we had both come up with, and picked out the ones we both were happiest with, then set about making sure they’d work on both radio and in-vision.

It wasn’t a quick process, but it was important to over-think than to under-think, as pretty much all the features required a first shot take.

We had a carefully planned show in excel so we knew the exact order of songs and where segments were going to go, this meant we could still announce songs and denounce songs.

Many of the featured content was recorded across different days, then in one day we recorded all the links.

It took a number of days of post production to get all the cameras in order, and align all the audio. The design work took me a bit of time but luckily came quite quickly (apart from the wheels in 5enses, they took ages for a total screen time of what 20 secs?).

It was a massive learning curve for me and Josh, but we thoroughly enjoyed it, and the process.

Once it was finished we wanted to make sure that we had a listen again option. We thought to record the whole show via UStream, but the quality isn’t great. I couldn’t find anywhere to upload an entire 2-hour long show, especially with licensed music.

We planned to make a podcast anyway so I began to cut out the links so we could upload them. It was only the next day when I wanted to listen to the Busted album (yes Busted) that I went onto YouTube and found the album playlist.

I’ve used playlists before, but it hadn’t dawned on me that I could playlist the show using the original music videos uploaded by the record labels.

Now that we have this knowledge that this is possible, there is so much potential to build a show. It now means I am looking at YouTube as a jumbled up puzzle, where any piece can fit. YouTube already has all the content we could need for a show, all we now need to do is create our own links to build it.

This idea could be particularly exciting to create a new-music based radio show. It would be a fantastic resource as it directs the user directly to their YouTube page as it finds its way through your playlist.

Not sure how much of all of this is possible, but it I’m sure there is a massive amount of potential.

Also, if anyone can think of a better name than ‘chapter-ed visual radio’, please let me know lol

Hope this is enough of a responce Matt, hope to see you soon,

Kenny

- Kenny

Is the boss of the department a man, and do they really need to dress-up as if they are dashing off to a party in Kensington?

They all act as if we should know who they are, but to me they look more like models than reporters ~ NOT very ‘newsy’ or BBC.

I agree about the point on local tv news looking bad, but ITV is far worse; those tatty small yellow sets are straight out of 1984…

Even if the BBC can’t be persuaded to get rid of local TV altogether, why do they have so many local weather presenters? Here in the East Midlands there must be four or five of them that appear for a few seconds to tell us what the national weather presenter has already told us.

I don’t actually like most BBC local radio very much at the moment, but I accept that the commercial sector isn’t going to bring it back, so I would welcome a greatly improved service from BBC local radio.

Can I add that since Capital, SmOoTh, et al greatly increased syndication there is now a glut of very good, experienced presenters, and News staff, from these stations that BBC local stations would be WELL advised to recruit. They are KNOWN in/ know the areas, often financially comfortable so would work for BBC wages as they ‘love radio’. Indeed some PRESENTERS would do a better job of being station manager than the people who might recruit them !?

We know that BBC = ‘job for life’ until now, whereas ILR* = ‘hang on to your job OR apply somewhere else soon!’

Bring in good local, known, on-air personalites, use the existing Radio 2 daytime music list (take off the Bruce Springsteen Elaine Paige extremes) and let the (very competent) presenters CHOOSE the music. NO need to PAY a music person !

Lastly, your comment “In the old GWR days we had 5 logs that you got depending on who your competitors are – it’s not a bad proxy if you haven’t got the music programming talent to do it yourself”.

Surely GWR were the ‘bad’ old days, DARK days for radio? Stations that previously, pre-93, crafted the music to each locality, had their Heads of Music thrown out for financial reasons, and Australian consultants told the PC/ Music person what to do.

These changes led to an exodus from the stations of most of the ‘good’ people, leaving them staffed with ‘yes men’. I doubt if today’s presenters, BBC Local, or music programmers can learn ANYTHING from the GWR model? And don’t even mention those stations that let the Head of Sales replace Programme Controllers!

There is VERY good and VERY bad BBC local radio, a simple ‘clear out’ of old wood, a great playlist, and fresh (enthusiastic) non-BBC style presenters, could vastly ‘hit’ ILR* where it hurts !

Len

* ILR (for younger radio people I do not think it anachronistic to use ‘ILR’; the people who kept trying to strangle it should squirm at what they did; using the name now is a Tribute to what was a great-sounding industry.)

But what if, as you note, the current incumbents aren’t able to hack doing a meaningful re-design? Fire someone for being incapable? The BBC? I don’t think so.