YR2 - WORK EXPERIENCE – HEART RADIO

I didn’t get the best reviews about the placement at Heart from the students who done it before me. They both thought it was an extremely boring experience, and for the most part, I would have to agree. I didn’t really do anything whilst I was there, it was the stuff I learnt about that interested me the most.



My first day was spent doing pretty much the same thing I done every other day, shadowing producer, Ben Marks. It was interesting watching him on the first day, seeing how fast he works, how he generates different ideas. He got to telling me about how he got into the industry, how long he had been working in radio. I was very surprised to hear that he was still quite new to the industry. He had only been working there for about two years but had already progressed to producer. By watching him work, you would have thought he had been in the job a lot longer than two years, he was so fast using Pro Tools. He got into the industry through an interest in music, which turned out to give him the edge that would put him above the rest.

At first, I thought his job was pretty straight forward. The first couple of days I sat in on him working, all he was doing was creating jingles and links to and from different segments of the show. However, after spending more time with him, I found out that his job and his influence played a very big part in the branding of the station. This was more noticeable when the station was GWR, before it merged into Heart radio. Back then, he had the job to brand the whole station, make it unique from all the others. However, since Heart has taken them over, he has less say in how things are to sound. Economically, the merge to Heart radio was a good idea. It means that there will be less work for each individual station to do because they are all using the same brand. Though less work means less jobs, and Ben has had to do extra work for other Heart stations around Britain to keep himself busy and in the good books. Whilst I was there he was working on promos for Heart Exeter, previously known as Gemini. It was kind of sad to see the industry in such a way that a good producer like Ben would fear so much for his job, as does everyone at the station.

Although I have no desire to work in radio, it did seem like a fun environment to work in. listening to the links for Breakfast with Bush, Troy & Paulina made me laugh. Ben took me in to meet one of the DJs, Stuart Elmore, who showed me around his deck. It was surprising actually seeing how easy his job was, all he done was push a button to play the songs that have been lined up by Heart already, add a bit of personality to the links and job done. He also took me around the news department. I spoke to Cormac MacMahon for a while about how he got into the industry...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CE6I-YfplI

Although Ben seemed very happy in his current job, he did tell me that he didn’t wish to work there forever, and that he would love to work for stations like 1Xtra or Kiss, stations that are better known for the kind of music he’s in to. Whilst I was there, he was emailing one of the producers at 1Xtra that he met at the Sony awards, at which he collected a silver for his promo Bristol's Big Give. at the moment he’s working towards another nomination for Race For Life for cancer research.
And his interests aren’t just in the radio industry, he still has a massive interest in music, and is DJ’ing a reggae set at the Bijou lounge in Whiteladies road.