To really understand the week we've just had you need to go a little further back, possibly even to last year when the current third years and those who've now graduated covered the General Election long into the night. With that in mind, we sort of needed an event which would be our General Election and a General strike seemed the way to go. In the weeks preceding the broadcast we assigned roles, started to gather packages and interviews and just generally got ready to put on one of the best productions of our time here at Uni. Unfortunately, we suddenly realised all our best laid plans were pointless if the picket lines at the university would stop our guests from making it to our studio. Where would be open on a day of strikes then? The Unite the Union offices in Southampton? Oh alright then. It did make a difficult day more difficult but it probably couldn't have been helped.
So on the Tuesday we headed down to set up the rooms we'd been allocated so they were as good as our very own TV studio and I think we did a great job. The Tricaster which is a piece of kit I should really learn how to use works as a vision mixer, sound desk and VT machine so in one 'computer' we had most of our studio. A few PD170s and 150s were hooked up to it as our cameras and a desk was appropriated for the presenters with another section off to side for guest discussion (with comfier chairs). I think this day was useful for us as we were able to rehearse without the stress of any of the content going out on air. We practiced live OBs from some of our news team who'd taken themselves off to McDonald's for the free Wi-Fi. They worked fairly well but of course this was without the pressure of a show, so any mistakes in the rehearsal could hopefully be ironed out before the big day. We had a few sound issues but we felt we'd sorted them by days end
The big day came around and we got in bright and early to set up and do some run throughs. As part of the 'breaking news team', me, Ewan and Henry set up shop upstairs with our laptops, suddenly realising that with a lack of internet ports, we wouldn't be able to access the breaking news sites. Fortunately, all our phones have wi-fi capability and we were able to access the internet on the laptops by using the 3G internet from our phones. It meant we were able to perform an essential function in providing George with updates throughout the day and also we could recycle those into headlines at the top of the hour. The wi-fi from our phones also reached George downstairs who was using an iPad to keep up on events via Twitter. I really think we did well to keep the presenters informed as the live OBs didn't necessarily work perfectly and often the conversation was thrown back to George as a back up, in fact he was used whenever anything went wrong so keeping him updated was vital.
There were other issues that forced us off air at times but our university connections and our superb reporters out in the field kept the program on air and I am extremely proud of the work we did and the day on the whole.
Edited highlights of the day below
Until Next Time. Stay Classy Internet.
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