So where were we?

On the last episode of Tales From The Bat Cave………

Dan promised to post more!

Now for the thrilling conclusion.

……..Well yes ok so I lied somewhat in so much as my posting has all but dissapeared recently but I do have some excuses!

Firstly, as my last post elluded too I have started producing a weekly baseball podcast which can be found here and you’d be surprised to know how long it takes to put together! However despite the fact it takes me a day or two to write, record, edit and publish I’m loving the experience and it’s great to finally produce something on a sport I love.

Secondly we’ve had quite a few assesments here in Falmouth over the past few weeks. I’ve completed a politics exam, a TV news assesment, and interview and two way assesments in the past three weeks so that’s been quite distracting for me.

I’ve also been plotting my MA, which is now going to be a look at the Thames Valley Bisons baseball team (MA Blog may or may not follow). I’ve been lucky enough to be assigned Rob Walker as my tutor, who you may have seen bobbing around in a boat during last years Olympics and I’m looking forward to having some advice from a man who’s started at the same place I am to now become a national tv sports reporter.

Reading FC and the Arizona Diamondbacks are also swallowing up large chunks of my attention. Reading had all but convinced me they didn’t want to get promoted only to somehow still be in with a chance as we head into the final game of the season. Meanwhile despite a dissapointing start for the D-Backs it’s great to be able to tune in every night to catch some baseball. The one downside of the aforementioned baseball is that it’s usually a 3am start…. so the bags under my eyes may have gotten a little bigger recently.

But mostly I will confess that I’ve just been spending as much time with my friends here as I can. My course is over in just four weeks now and it’s sad to think I won’t be seeing a lot of the people I’ve got so close to here for weeks or months.

Before I leave Falmouth I have a couple more exams and have to finish my portfolio of audio/visual presentation work to be assessed. The I’m totally free to work on my MA and need to have it finished by September 11th. Before September though I have four weeks worth of work experience with Sky Sports so I’ll be experiencing the London commute for the first time in my life (wish me luck…)

Anyway, that’s a very quick review of all that I’ve been up too recently. I won’t make a promise I’ll update more as that doen’t seem to work very well but I’ll promise to try.

Until next time.

Wimbles

Take me out the ballgame

Ok so I’m a terrible liar I’ve not posted nearly as much as I’d wanted too!

I honestly will catch you up with some musings but for now here is the first Arizona Diamondbacks Fancast I’ve produced.

Click Me

Please feel free to comment!

2+2 = -£20,000 that’s if 2=BA and 2=MA to the power of 4 years

It’s quite surreal having all this free time all of a sudden. For the best part of three months I’ve been working flat out, but for now it’s calm and I find myself waking up later and going to be in the wee hours of the morning.

It’s given me a lot of time to look to the future and to wonder what life will hold in store for me after Falmouth. I certainly think I’m done once and for all with eductation! I’ve spent seventeen years taking SATS, GCSE’s, A-Levels and doing a BA and an MA and  I think I’ve had my fill.

That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed and appreciated all the time I’ve spent learning. The 18 months I spent out of the educational bubble has made me appreciate this one final year all the more. But all good things have to come to an end if only for the simple reason that my bank balance can’t take the strain any longer!

The greatest pain in my student life has been the knowledge that I’ve been digging a great big financial hole. By the time my year in Falmouth is over I’ll be roughly £21,000 in debt and that’s not including interest. Even so, I’m among the last generation of students who didn’t have to pay top of fees and Universities want to be able to charge even more in the next few years.

My sister, and others like her who started University in 2006, they will owe roughly £20,000 and that’s for an undergraduate degree. The Government has defended such levels of student debt, saying that graduates will earn more over their lifetimes and that the student loan repayments are staggered so that they will have little impact.

Perhaps two or three years ago this rang true, but in todays financial climate who knows what the value of a degree will be? Is a degree going to be worth £20,000? and will such huge sums of debt help cripple a generation or two. I don’t profess to know all about the conomy but it doesn’t make sense to me.

The pension crisis means we’re being told to prepare earlier and earlier for retirement and to start paying into our pensions. At the same time the mortgage market is at the point where people need to save more and more before they can get on the housing ladder. Couple this with the fact that there are more and more graduates and logic dictates that the net value of having a degree will decrease, and with it wages.

So is it right to charge young people and more often then not, their parents, so much for an education? Does the entire system need changing, or do people need to accept the fact they have to pay now to have the chance to earn later?

I don’t know if it will all implode or what the answer is, but from a personal standpoint I’m a little bit worried.

This fear is only magnified by the fact I’m trying to forge a career in the media where wages are notoriously low and right now jobs are harder and harder to come by.

Trying to forge a career in the media, especially on the journalism side of things, is a double edged sword. On the one hand the sense of well being and the joy of doing something you really love is amazing. But on the other hand you are told and quickly find out that the pay you’re going to get is going to be low, the hours long and room for error is slim. That’s if you get a job at all! If it all works out and I get to report on sport for a living, then I don’t care how much I make financially as long as I can afford a roof above my head and can pay my bills.

But what happens if you don’t make it?

We’ve been told by so many guests this year that to make it in this industry you sometimes have to make tough sacrifices. You may have to move to obscure parts of the country, work hours that mean you have no social life and give hours and days of your life to tv and radio stations for free, paying to get there.

It all means that wannabe journalists have to make very tough choices right from the word go. You work just as hard as those who can earn large sums of money but you realise you have to sacrifice years of your life and thousands of pounds for no guaranteed returns.

The only option to keep piece of mind is to back yourself all the way and do everything in your power to make it. Worrying about not making it does puts me through emotional strain, but it does inspire me to succeed and to make the most of any and every chance I get. For me the rewards of succeeding far outweigh the financial worries that go through my head. I realise that I might not be able to afford a holiday or a nice car for a decade or more but it will only make that eventual holiday all that bit more amazing. More to the point, if you didn’t have to make sacrifices and go through hardships then what you’re aiming for may not be worth it in the first place.

I guess the  credit card advert is right, cost of four years study, £20,000, satisfaction of getting your dream job. Priceless.

66% down 1/3 to go.

Well that my friends is that.

It’s now our spring break down here in Falmouth and we have three weeks to revise for exams, research our MA and generally recharge our batteries.

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic as usual, with the class having to produce radio documentaries as well as making content for Live @ Five and working on our regulations and ethics projects (Censor This)

I’ve also had to cram in working for Pirate FM and have been to watch the Cornish Pirates against Esher and Bedford in the last couple of weeks. I’ve also been to see Reading draw with Plymouth Argyle which was a strange experience as I seemed to know more about Argyle’s form then my own teams thanks to my work for Pirate. Ironically due to licensing issues I wasn’t allowed to write the reports for the station from the game, as Pirate aren’t allowed to report from with Plymouth’s ground!

But anyway, after twenty weeks of solid learning and structured practical work we’ve pretty much finished the ‘taught’ section of the course. After 10 Live @ Five’s, 3 radio magazine shows and 8 or 9 radio newsroom days it’s now down to us to practise and learn the skills we feel we need to enhance and work on

It’s staggering to think just how much work we’ve had to do this term but I think it’s worthwhile when you’re able to look at yourself and say you’ve improved. Sat at my office desk last September I would have never thought I’d be producing an eight minute long politics documentary for radio, but at about 7pm on Thursday I handed in just such a project.

Already people’s focus on the course is looking toward the future, something that’s fun yet scary. Two weeks ago one of my best friends got a job freelancing at one of the local radio stations and it was a real wake up call to the fact that we can hopefully look forward to being PAID to do what we’ve been doing in class for weeks.  On a personal level I’ve had some good news this week as I’ve been lucky enough to get four weeks worth of work experience with Sky. Over June and then a few weeks later in July, I’ll be on placement with Sky Sports News before moving onto the Sky News sports desk.

From now until my time there I’m going to work my arse off to ensure that when I walk into those newsrooms I’m able to do as much as I can to as high a standard as possible to make a good impression. Thankfully as I’ve mentioned before the taught element of the course has now finished so we’ve got a lot more time to work on specific skills and to hone CV’s and demos for the future.  However, I’ve also had to start thinking about what to do for an MA project that I’ll be doing over the summer and handing in in September.

My proposal at the moment is to look at how the loss of Olympic status has harmed baseball within the UK. The piece I’m going to make will have to be between fifteen and twenty minutes long and can either be for radio or tv. Given the fact that sport is such a visual experience I’m going to try and produce it for television if I at all can. I won’t go into too much detail on this blog as in the next week or so I’ll be starting a separate blog to cover the project so watch this space.

I say it every week but I hope to blog a bit more in the next few weeks. Given that I’m now on holiday that should actually be a possibility for once!

Take it easy,

Wimbles

Everybody’s doing the WoW yeah yeah yeah

So more fun and frolics down here in Cornwall recently. It started with presenting Live @ Five, then reporting on a belter of a rugby game and getting to interview Reel Big Fish.

I have to say that presenting was different to how I’d expected. It’s very stop start, with pre-records here, rehearsals there and then the main event. It’s one of those things where you can’t fully relax at any point during the day. Ironically enough I didn’t feel that nervous during the show, it was only beforehand that the butterflies started. 

I do wonder whether presenters and journalists still get those butterflys even if they’ve done a hundred bulletins. I like to think that having a few nerves is a good thing as it keeps you on your toes and so i wonder (if and when I get a job) if such feelings will remain!

Me and Rachel presenting Live @ 5

*I’ll add uploading footage of me presenting to my ever growing list of things I need to upload.

Being a presenter is also odd from the point of view that you put your fate, or more aptly words, into the hands of other people. Your exposure to your scripting team is dependant on whether they get it done in time or not . Thankfully this week we had an hour or so to look over and edit the script but even so 90% of the script is so rigid and set in stone that you can’t change it. It’s at times like this I’m glad I’m working/learning in an environment where I know and trust the people who will be putting those words in my mouth.

Wednesday saw another fun day of online journalism and I had a few stories  published on www.ucfjourno.org if anybody would like to check them out (even though by now they are out of date!) two stories on the Pirates were my main output of the day.

The rest of the week was dominated by preparations for our group blog presentation for Censor This. It’s amazing how going into the final week you fret and panic you won’t have enough material and yet by the time you get to do a run through you are frantically cutting away to make it fit. All in all the presentation went well on the Thursday and we felt as a group that we’d done ourselves justice.

Saturday saw a return to sporting form and this included a trip to Mounts Bay to see them take on Launceston aka the Cornish All Blacks. The game turned out to be a belter with the All Blacks nicking the win in the 8th minute of injury time, a result that left Mounts Bay facing relegation. Unfortunately Reading decided to lose to Bristol City which took the shine of an otherwise fun day.

 

 To Sunday, the day of the Fish! Reel Big Fish to be exact. Out of the Ska bands I like.. (which is about four) they are without doubt my favourites and having seen them at countless festivals I was looking forward to an hour and a half set at the Princess Pavilion.

An added bonus was that Mary had arranged an interview with them and I was asked along to help out, something I jumped at. It’s been about three years since I went to interview The Towers of London in Manchester and nearly two years since my interviews at Download so it felt awesome to get back into the music journalism scene again. Sadly our technology didn’t share our enthusiasm and promptly died when we got into the dressing room, depsite it working fine beforehand. Frustration aside it was still nice to conduct a good old fashioned written interview. What was even better was to discover that a bands dressing room isn’t sex drugs and rock and roll, it was bottles of water, calm and full of laptops playing World of Warcraft. Yes that’s right, Reel Big Fish are nerdcore… epic.

Since that Sunday we’ve had another week full of trials and tribulations but i’ll save it for later.

Until then I’ll leave you with a picture of me dressed as Optimus Prime this past week, proof that journalists can be creative! (credit must go to Mum aka Jules for help with the costume!)

No Ben No!! *Paws*

Some of you will get the reference of my title, others won’t but to be honest I’m too tired to think of much else!

It’s been another hectic couple of weeks down here we’ve had TV shows, multimedia newsrooms, snow and a trip to a Royal Navy Base all of which might help to explain why the Bat Cave has been a bit empty recently.

So if we wind the clocks back a couple of weeks, I was producer for one of our Live at Five shows which meant I was running round and phoning people in the days proceeding the show to make sure everything was in order. Thankfully the entire team was awesome and we were ready to rock and roll with time to spare but as the time to air came… it started to unravell… Fifteen minutes from air time our live studio guest who we were planning to interview on air dropped out due to the snowy conditions and with such little time to go there was no time to get a new guest involved. Cue quick edits to the script on the auto-cue and much frustration in the gallery but we were still ok to roll. But then the snow got worse. Within minutes we were shut down and told we wouldn’t be doing the show after all, as we were all sent packing back home before we got trapped at Uni in the snow. 

Never before have I seen as much snow in this country before and it really was an evening I’ll never forget. What’s more the snow carried on and meant that there was no way to get either to University, nor the Navy base that we had planned to visit on the Tuesday. So instead we did what any good journalist would do…. held a snow ball fight and made snowmen! There is nothing like snow to bring you back down to the mental age of a schoolboy (well certain beverages perhaps) and It was an awesome day to have fun and just unwind for 24 hours. 

We returned to the Newsroom on Wednesday and broadcast the show which I felt went really well. A big thank you to everyone who helped and especially to the presenters, Pete and Ali you are both my heros!

 

Pete and Ali presenting Live at Five on 4/2/2009 Thanks Guys!

When that was done, we completed a multi media newsroom which involved me being on Shock FM duty. Shock FM is our equivalent of a local commercial radio station with a target audience along the lines of Radio 1’s Newsbeat   That means we have to produce 90 second bulletins which we drive and present ourselves. All in all it was quite good fun and along the lines of what I was used too from student radio and my work experience over Christmas. 

In last week’s newsroom I was producer and then presenter of our ‘BBC Radio Falmouth’ show which as the name suggests, is designed to mirror a BBC local radio bulletin. We had to get out bulletins of first 3, then 4 and finally 5 mintues to reflect a BBC model. Again it was good fun but a lot more challenging as getting used to cutting adding and changing stories was tough as a producer as I’d never before done the role.

Also over the last two weeks I visted RNAS Culdrose along with my course mates in order to get material for the first of our radio magazine shows. The day was postponed as I’ve mentioned before due to snow but it was worth the wait as we had an interesting and thoroughly enjoyable day out! The highlight for me was sitting in a Harrier Jump Jet and playing with the controls, the more I write about what I enjoy the more I think that maybe I’m not in my early twenties after all….

Finally the other main bit of work I’ve done in the last few weeks was to shoot and edit a package on National Chip week which was last week. My package (which I hope to upload sooner rather then later) consisted of me not only eating chips but visiting a kitchen fire safety demonstration held at a local ASDA by the Cornwall County Fire Service. 

Sporting wise I’ve not been to any rugby recently as it’s clashed with my filming of the fire demo and this weekend past none of the Cornish sides have been in action within the area. However I have helped Pete do some Plymouth coverage as they slumped to another defeat by Charlton on Saturday.

All in all it’s been a busy yet enjoyable few weeks but the pace won’t drop for me for at least another week as I have to give a presentation on Internet Regulation based on our blog Censor This and also I’m presenting Live at Five tomorrow! (video may or may not feature based on how bad I look on camera and if I look like a ragamuffin, to use the words of my mother)

I really hope that I can get back to writing about things other then my weeks gone by as soon and for those who still read this thank you!

A couple more sporting Sundays and other events.

Cheers to those who continue to read my entries, it’s nice to know its not ALL gibberish!

The term here has been manic and aside from a twenty four hour period I’ve not really had a chance to write about what’s been going on. It’s been really busy for us down here since we got back (which is sounding tired I know but it really has) After the first week madness with getting a TV show put out and completing our law exam, things have hardly gotten any easier.

We’ve so far managed to put out two further TV shows, but this time we’ve had to get the features and packages as well as manage and present it. During the first full show (as described elsewhere in this blog) I was sports presenter but this week it was my turn to try being part of the general reporting team. With four strong package ideas already in motion I decided to play a more supporting role.  With that in mind I spent most of Friday helping out on two different shoots, mainly doing camera work and on Monday i roamed  various editing suites helping where I could.

All in all both programmes have gone well and it’s staggering to think how far we’ve come as a unit in just 13 weeks. I remember thinking how hard it seemed to edit one tiny radio interview

Here's one they made earlier. I have no idea when this was taken but sadly it's not my class, the gallery is pretty much the same mind

and now I’m helping produce three minute packages for TV. Still it’s all good fun despite the challenging and sometimes stressful environment. Next Monday it’s my turn to be the show’s Producer so that should make for a very interesting blog entry (if I survive).

Elsewhere we’ve been introduced to more of the skills we’ll need as multimedia broadcast journalists. Our course has actually just been renamed to Multimedia Broadcast Journalism which is to try and reflect the amount of work we do with online material. With that in mind, we’ve been learning how to upload and manage online content, which whilst technology wise I find easy enough, I can’t say the same for writing news!

Today saw us take a trip to a Crown Court where we were sitting as members of the press during some trial hearings. Whilst we didn’t actually get to see evidence be given before a jury, it was interesting to learn first hand how a court works. For me personally any work with the law and courts brings up mixed feelings as for a long time I had planned to go into law as a solicitor or barrister.

Such dreams were born out of my experience as part of the mock court trial competition that I took part in when I was fourteen. Our school made it through several rounds and eventually made it through to the National Finals in Birmingham where we narrowly missed out on a place in the grand final, losing out to two sides from Birmingham. Even so, our run saw us finish third in the UK (or as I prefer to look at it the leading side outside of Birmingham….I’m not bitter honest) That run and the buzz of being a lawyer eventually inspired me to apply to study law at three Universities. Ultimately though I decided to accept an offer to do History at Lancaster but was fortunate in that Lancaster required you to enroll in two other subjects in your first year and so I chose law, just to keep my options open.  In the end though Law 101 didn’t inspire me enough to discard History and already by the end of my first year at Uni I had began to lean towards a career in the media.

Even so to this day I’m still fascinated by many aspects of law and so it’ll always be an interest of mine. Although at this stage it’s probably worth saying, with great irony, that the actual REPORTING of law is actually quite boring to me, it’s how the law works that interests me.

Moving along though, I’ve actually had more sports based role and activity in the last two weeks then in the first ten combined! As I’ve mentioned before I’ve finally been out doing some actual sporting coverage, as I’ve been helping Pirate FM get interviews and reaction from the Cornish Pirates Rugby team. The past two Sundays, firstly me and Pete and then me and Tommy have been sent down to Camborne to cover live rugby and it’s been amazing. Even as someone who isn’t normally a big rugby fan I’ve been really impressed by the club and the match day atmosphere. I really can’t say how nice friendly, helpfull and genuine the staff and players at the club are. Even though the club know that myself, Tommy and Pete are all just students getting a few clips for a local radio station, they still treat us the same as any other media. The club goes out of its way to give us free programmes, entry to the ground, good parking and even a cup of tea at half time. It’s the friendly and open approach that seems to have gone out of a lot of sports, noticeably football, in recent years and so to find a professional sports team so well connected with its supporters and press is very refreshing.

Look Mum! I'm making TV!

I’ve taken in both games from the television gantry alongside the teams head coach which has been a great insight into how a professional coach views and analyses games. More importantly though the last two weeks have helped me improve my camera work and my interviewing skills. This past Sunday I was involved in my first ‘media scrum’ as four of us huddled around the head coach after the game with our audio recorders. For the first time I actually felt like a true sports reporter and whilst the experience was brief it still taught me a lot and gave me great confidence. Whilst at the games we’ve also taken footage on the TV cameras for Live at Five and the Sunday before last I spent a lot of time helping Pete put together a package. It’s great when we get back to an AVID suite and look at pictures and interviews that honestly wouldn’t look out of place on a news programme and again that gives me the drive and confidence to keep working hard down here.

That’s not to say the last two Sundays have passed entirely smoothly! On our first outing the audio recorder we had from Pirate died meaning we had to use the audio from the camera instead! We also nearly got run over by St Johns Ambulance staff and disabled supporters as we were trying to get some closing shots.

Tomorrow we have our first ‘multimedia news room’ and my role is to be part of the website team, writing stories and uploading our content to the UCF Journo website As well as writing stories we have to upload video and audio footage produced by other teams, which include the rolling TV news team and the rolling radio news team. However we also have to go get some content ourselves, particularly pictures due to copyright issues!

In other news, I managed to pass my law module of the course with room to spare in the end which is a relief. I’ve also managed to scrape together some good marks in some other mock exams so it’s comforting to know some of what I’m learning here is sinking in.

Finally on a personal note I’m now in the process of writing my placement application to Sky Sports News so that’s going to keep me busy for the next evening or so, which means blogging will be at a premium!

Hope everyone has a fun week and until next time… stay classy planet Earth.

My Name is Daniel Wimbush… and today is probably not the longest day of my life

The following takes place between 2am and 8am…..

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The following takes place between 8am and 9am.

I was woken up not by a call from the President but instead the delightful sound of my I-Phone’s alarm. The time was 8:40 and I should have been awake at 8am….

I needed to get my clothes out of the tumble dryer, get dressed, have a shower, get my suit in order, pack my gym gear and get a camera tripod to Uni in time for 9:30am. It quickly dawned on me that the bus just wouldn’t be a fun time in such circumstances so I decided to take the car in.

But the car in itself posed trouble. Not in the form of terrorists but in the fact that my wallet was light and I was struggling for parking funds. Faced with such dilemmas I did the only thing a sane man would do…. raided my large novelty cup of change. I also decided to call a few people to see if they fancied lifts and after two accepted I finally got my stuff all done and got ready to leave.

The following takes place between 9am and 10am.

I finally left the house at around 9:10am and set of on my journey to Uni via Pete’s house. The journey took about fifteen minutes and instead of having to dodge pursuing enemies on the roads, my biggest challenge was finding a parking space on campus.

A ten minute walk and three pounds in the parking meter later I walked into CTU  (aka The Newsroom) ready to help Pete turn raw footage we’d taken at a rugby game yesterday into a two minute package for the television news show the team was making today.

My role was sports reporter so my other tasks that morning would involve doing a pre recorded sports bulletin and providing the graphics and clips to go along with that.

Within minutes of my arrival into the News room the reality of how long it would take me to prepare graphics and get clips and write and record my script became painfully obvious and so I had to leave Pete to his own devices in an AVID (Audio Visual editing) suite.

The following takes place between 10am and 11am.

I went about my task of making graphics in a tiny room with two computer screens and a VCR as my weapons of choice. In order to make the VCR useful though I had to ask the technicians to record some Sky Sports News footage that I could edit into my own bulletin (hi-tech I know)

The graphics were proving trickier then I’d thought, mostly due to the fact I’m still quite new to using Photoshop but slowly he haze around my brain began to lift and I got some good work done.

With a start made, it was time to grab some late breakfast/early lunch and a sausage and bbq sauce sandwich from the campus shop killed off the threat of hunger nicely.

The following takes place between 11am and 12pm

My graphics were coming together well but sadly my television pictures were not. The quality of the feed wasn’t good enough for broadcast and so the director said we’d have to use stills instead.  Epic fail.

With pictures sorted it was time to work on my script, which I’ve put below.

Thanks guys,

Coming up we have a full roundup after a busy weekend of football as Manchester United went top of the Premier League.

But first, the regions rugby teams have been in action in the EDF National Trophy, and our reporter Pete Odgers was watching the Cornish Pirates down in Camborne.

***************** Sports Package*******************

Elsewhere in the competition, Mounts Bay slipped to a forty three points to five defeat against Esher, whilst the Exeter Chiefs took apart Preston by a record one hundred and fifteen points at Sandy Park

Launceston also won’t be in the next round as they fell by five points at home to the Pertemps Bees.

As we’ve already heard from Pete the Pirates ran out winners over Southend.

And finally Plymouth Albion went out of the cup after a twenty one points to three loss at Doncaster.

Moving on now,

It was a dramatic weekend of football in the Barclays Premier League as Manchester United moved above Liverpool in the title race.

A dramatic late winner by Dimitar Berbatov against Bolton snatched three points for United who are now one point clear of Liverpool.

But the drama wasn’t just confined to the Reebok Stadium, as Chelsea also grabbed a late win after beating Stoke at Stanford Bridge.

Frank Lampard was the hero for the home side as he rifled in a goal deep into stoppage time to keep the blues in the title hunt

Elsewhere Aston Villa defeated Sunderland two one to stay fourth whilst Arsenal remain just outside the Champions League places despite a three one victory over Hull City.

West Brom picked up three points by beating Middlesborough as did Blackburn after beating Newcastle.  West Ham defeated Fulham, whilst Tottenham and Portsmouth fought out a one all draw.

And finally, Manchester City’s current players showed why they may not need to spend one hundred million pounds on Brazillian Kaka as they beat Wigan one nil at Eastlands.

That’s it from me, now back to the studio.

The following takes place between 12pm and 1pm.

I had to run back to the newsroom to get my script printed and get changed. I needed five copies of the script, one for me and four for the director, vt, sound and a spare copy just in case.  With the printer on the go, I got changed into my suit and headed up the gallery to go and pre-record my piece to camera.

Sadly by the time I got to the studio the director called for lunch so I was left suited and booted but with nothing to do. With that in mind I headed down to the AVID suites to see if I could finally give Pete a hand, only to find he was just about finished.

The following takes place between 1pm and 2pm.

Still no call from the President, but I am called to the studio to load my script onto the auto-cue and do some rehearsals. I quickly gain a new found respect for anybody doing work in front of a green screen. If you’ve ever seen somebody do work in front of a blue/green screen, what you don’t realise is that they have to stare at a very very bright green/blue ring around the end of the camera, just below the auto cue.  Ouch.

Rehearsals went well, my graphics were also loaded on despite my protests that they weren’t 100% ready and I wanted to do more. I soon realised I’d left off a result which was unfortunate but thankfully as it was the last result I would be describing we could just cut away from the graphics.

We managed to get it all recorded in one take which was nice and meant that I could go back down to the newsroom, get changed and relax for a bit.

The following takes place between 2pm and 3pm.

Finally out of the suit and resolved to my resolve to lose weight to fit into aforementioned suite that bit easier next time.

A quick trip to the AVID suites follows to help out briefly with a package on an aquarium, after which I’m forced to put up with Under the Sea being in my head for the rest of the day…..

After a quick drive around the information super highway during which I discover my former flatmate is getting married, I head back to the studio to lend a hand with rehearsals.

The following takes place between 3pm and 4pm

My role for main rehearsals is to do the ’studio guest’ and I feel I give a good performance trying to be the leader of Carrick District Council, maybe I should call him and tell him he’s not needed?

It’s interesting seeing just how much rehearsal has to go into each segment before we actually do a full dress rehearsal. What’s more interesting is hearing that in the industry they almost never rehearse, you’re expected to get it right first time.

The following takes place between 4pm and 5pm

The full dress rehearsal goes well and we’re off to the green room for some celebratory doughnuts and tea as we wait for the studio guest to arrive.

At twenty to five it’s battle stations as the show prepares to go live. With the studio guest on board and no more rehearsals I take a seat at the back of the gallery to watch the drama unfold.

We’re due to go out on air ‘Live @ 5′ but as our guest is here we decide to go live  at ten to five instead.

The first ten minutes of the show go really well with only one slight handover problem and the mood in the gallery is all good.

The following takes place between 5pm and 6pm.

The rest of the show goes well and my pre recorded sports segment seems to have gone down well with the audience in the gallery.

We then head back to the newsroom for ’post match’ analysis of today’s show and the whole team received praise from our tutors which is always nice.

Whilst some of the team go off to eat, drink and be merry I head to the gym which is a far from pleasant experience given the amount of people actually in the gym.  The problem isn’t so much the amount of people there but more that the gym area feels like a hot sweaty sauna and I don’t expect a great workout.

The following takes place between 6pm and 7pm.

Within minutes of starting my work out I realise this isn’t going to be fun as I’m struggling to breathe with the  humid coniditions and heavy air and after 25 minutes on the cross trainer and another 15 on the treadmill I can’t take anymore and make my way back to the changing rooms.

Hannah has also been working out at the gym so I give her a lift back to Falmouth listening to some Radio 1 on the way home. Still no call from the President…..

The following takes place between 7pm and 8pm

I head home to grab a shower as I’m due to meet Pete and Tommy down the pub for the Mersyside Derby between Liverpool and Everton at about 7:45. However my shower plans are thwarted as the bathroom is engaged for the entire time I’m home so I do the next best thing and get changed and slap on some more deodorant to get me through the night.

I got down the pub nice and early and sit down in a decent seat with a good view and was soon joined by a motley crew that included Tommy, Saul, Pete and Gareth.

The following takes place between 8pm and 9pm

More diet coke is consumed and Domino’s pizza is added to the mix. God bless BOGOF, pizza toppings include BBQ sauce, ham and pepperoni.

No terrorist activity noted.

The following takes place between 9pm and 10pm

Liverpool take the lead, with the Everton midfield and defence giving Steven Gerrard space enough 20 yards from goal to put the home side in the lead. If I’m David Moyes I’m furious as you NEVER give the Liverpool skipper that kind of space in those areas. However, Everton snatch a late draw through Tim Cahill to deny Liverpool the three points they needed to go back to the top of the table.

The following takes place between 10pm and 11pm

The short walk up the hill back home swiftly follows the full time whistle and I settle down in bed to try and lead Basingstoke Town to further glory in Football Manager 09.  Meanwhile Wall-E get put in the Blu-Ray player and I’m well set for a nice relaxing night.

The following takes place between 11pm and 12am

Internet chatter and phone conversations occupy my time as well as FM for the next hour or so, Wall-E is awesome but I’m having a hard time paying attention to it tonight.

The following takes place between 12am and 1am

Promotion to League 1 means that I can go to bed happy, it’s been a pretty good if not that eventful day and I’m very much looking forward to sleep!

The following takes place between 1am and 2am

zzzzzzzzzzzzz

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So that was my twenty four hours and if you’ve read this far… well done. I just wanted to give some insight into a typical day for me down here and hope that anyone reading enjoyed it!

I’ve actually been up to a fair amount since I last wrote but after this entry (some 2200 words!) I think I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

New Year, New Challenges, Old Shoes?

Whilst 2009 may have officially started back on January 1st, for me the year really began on Sunday January the 11th the day before my term started back here in Falmouth.

That day set the tone for the year ahead of me as I had to deal with dissapointing news on a personal front and yet remain focussed and prepared for a tough working term ahead. This year is looking like being the most crucial one of my life so far, certainly in a professional sense.  One thing that I’ve been reminded off already is the need to  keep my dreams and aspirations I hold outside of the working world but to keep them as seperate as I can from the dreams I have for the professional world.

It was whilst trying to make sense of all of the above that I began the term properly on Monday with an ‘Introduction to T.V’ I use the term introduction in inverted commas due to the fact that said introduction comprised of us actually making a television news programme.

Whilst we all got a broad overview of each individual role I was assigned on the ‘turbo’ desk along with Siobhan and it was our job to make sure the pre recorded clips were played at the right times. The job wasn’t exactly challenging but its amazing to think of how many different clips and cuts have to go into a programme and yet how very rarely they go wrong! Next week I’m part of the presenting team and at the moment I’m slated to present the sports, something I can’t wait to do. Over the last few days I’ve felt a bit frustrated over the lack of sporting oppertunities I’ve had so far on the course so the chance to flex my sports journalism muscles will be very welcome! Today has been sadly much more low key as we sat our final law exam… I think I did ok *touch Wood…no not you Steve*

Given recent developments I’ve also commited myself to operation lay the groundwork for getting a job, by polishing up my C.V. and sending some out to sporting outlets across the country. Even if I’m stuck in Cornwall for the next few months I’ve got to try and lay some foundations for when I enter the big bad world this summer.  As Motion City Soundtrack sang, “The Future Freaks me Out” but in a good as well as a terrifying way.

My next entry is going to be about the impact of 24 hours (inspired by Mr Jack Bauer) to see just what 24 hours is like for a regular old joe and an excuse to just write some (more) randomness.

Finally I’ve also updated our group project blog and if you’re interested at all in Internet Regulation it’s here.

The FA Cup, does it matter?

 

Today saw the third round of the English FA Cup, one of the oldest football cup competitions in the world and a competition that has captured the imaginations of football fans for generations. 

Today the team I support, Reading, were knocked out in their first match of this seasons tournament, losing two nil away at Cardiff City. Ordinarily a defeat for Reading puts me in a bad mood for the rest of the weekend but today it didn’t seem to matter as it was the cup not the league. 

It’s a view seemingly shared by not only other fans, but players, managers and chairmen across the country as many teams put out half strength sides, choosing to rest their players for the league campaign. So, when did the FA Cup go from being the highlight of the British footballing calendar to being an afterthought?

 

The FA Cup was first won by the Wanderers in 1872 and is currently held by Portsmouth

 

 

The first ever professional game of football I watched was an FA Cup clash between Reading and Oldham back in 1995 and since that day I’ve seen Reading take on the likes of Southampton, Welling, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur in some amazing matches. 

Sadly the only amazing games I seem to see these days are matches not involving my own team, as lesser sides take on the giants of the game. Even today European Cup finalists Chelsea were held by a team two leagues below them and Hartlepool knocked out Premiership side Stoke. The FA cup is brilliant for giving the Davids of football the chance to take down Goliath, or even losing to Goliath but still pocketing enough cash to see them survive for years to come. 

For me personally though the FA Cup went into a relative coma in 2006, as far as as something to excite me anyway, the year Reading won promotion to the Premiership. Suddenly we weren’t one of the little teams trying to scalp the big boys, we were one of the big boys. Suddenly the idea of playing Liverpool wasn’t exciting, afterall we got to play them twice a year in the league. The thought of going to a grand stadium like Old Trafford didnt eve excite me, we’d get 19 big grounds to go to and our own stadium wasn’t exactly shabby. 

So suddenly the Premier League was the most important thing and to save our team from getting relegated we decided to rest our best players during FA Cup weekends. Such a policy has angered many fans who feel that such a policy devalues the cup and is the very reason nobody gets excited. After reading so many of these rants, I decided to post my own thoughts on the Reading forum i visit 

 

I don’t see why so many people complain about our ‘cup side’ to be honest. The manager obviously feels certain players need a rest or else he wouldn’t rest them would he? He’s not putting out a different team just for the sake of it. 

He obviously has faith in all of these squad guys do come in and do a job or else they wouldn’t be playing for RFC and most of the starting XI today had played in the first team for spells this year, or in years past. 

As for people jumping up and down saying we won’t win anything by playing squad players, do you seriously believe we could win it with a full strength team? We didn’t even win here in the league a few weeks ago (ok we had 10 men but still) Maybe we could focus on trying to win every cup competition we’re in but if Doyle got crocked in a 2-0 defeat in a cup to Cardiff or in a 2-1 win away at Old Trafford to put us into a semi final for that matter would you still back SSC playing a full strength side? The transfer windows have helped make cups an unnecessary risk for managers of sides fighting for promotion.

On an even more simple level, how many times has a side from outside the top ten of the Premier League won the cup in the Premiership era? Try twice and even then it was a Pompy side secure in their Premiership status and then Everton back in 1995 who were still one of the biggest teams in the country. Yes Wimbledon winning the cup was great, so was Southampton et all but football has moved on so much now and any attempts to claim otherwise and we might as well move back to Elm Park…..

As for prestige value? What glory does a cup run get you after a fews days out and the build up? how many of us were sat here before this game saying “OMG we’re playing the cup runners up!!!11!!” How often do you hear Boro fans going on about their two cup final defeats when they got relegated? Have Wycombe or Tranmere kicked on after their long cup runs? how about Leciester who won the Carling cup not once but twice in the last decade where are they now? 

I take more pride in Reading being the biggest points scorers in a single season or pipping teams out over 46 games then being able to fluke our way to a cup semi final/final by pulling off 1 or 2 big results in a season.

Compare those brief moments of cup joy to the months when we thought we might be promoted and then the joy of getting there, the summer afterwards and then the whole of the Premier League experience. You’d honestly take a gamble risking players crucial to our league campaign in cup matches? 

On a personal note some of the greatest Reading games I’ve seen we’re cup games, the wins over Southampton in particular. However I can’t remember many great cup games since we’ve moved to the Madejski. Ironically our recent success means that I don’t sit and wait for the cup draw hoping we get a top team, if anything I want a minnow away.

I do hate the fact that the cup doesn’t mean as much anymore but that has as much to do with the power of the biggest teams then the attitude of teams like Reading. Yes I’d love Reading to win a cup competition but until we reach that level of a stable Premier league side then sorry any cup progress is a bonus. I appreciate that the cup does have some magic for smaller teams but we’d struggle to be a big underdog unless we were playing a European challenging side. 

Back on topic, none of this excuses a pretty poor performance today but it’s not going to ruin my weekend like a 2-0 league defeat might.

 

If you want to read the reactions etc then the link is here  Simply put however many feel that the risk of players getting injured and us missing out on the Premiership is worth it for a decent cup run. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see Reading play at Wembley in a  final but I know that our best chance of doing that long term is to be an established Premiership side. The sad fact is that there are four or five teams who dominate football now, making it unrecognisable from the 70’s and 80’s.

In the FA Cup Finals since the Premier League was formed in 1993, there have been four teams sharing 14 cups, Arsenal (5) Man United (4) Liverpool (2)  Chelsea (3) those same teams have also appeared in another seven finals meaning the same 4 teams have taken two thirds of places in FA Cup Finals. Also since the Premier League was formed in 1993 only two of 32 finalists have been from outside of the top league.

Wembley way on cup final day,is this still what footballing dreams are made of?

 

If you compare this to the previous 16 finals, there were eight winners, Man United (4) Ipswich, Arsenal, West Ham, Spurs (3) Liverpool (3), Coventry and Wimbledon.   Whilst the game had it’s giant’s teams like Coventry, Wimbledom, West Ham and Ipswich proved smaller teams could win the competition. 

I know stats can be used to demonstrate any number of things but I challenge anybody who lived through the 70’s and 80’s to tell me the cup was as predictable then than it is now. 

Sadly the amount of money that the top sides earn mean that if they chose to fully focus on the cups then they would destroy the smaller teams 99/100. In a way the only reason the cup is exciting at all is because the slightly less focused and strong sides put out by the ‘big four’ allows smaller clubs to knock them out. 

So what’s the answer? Many ideas have been put forward. Some suggest the FA could sanction clubs who make more then say 3 unforced changes from their league side the week before. Others propose a seeding system or bringing the big teams in later to ensure they treat the competition more seriously. Some theorise that if the winner of the cup were to get a Champions league place then it would be taken more seriously. 

So what do I think? Well I think it’s fine as it is, the lower clubs still have goliath to aim for whilst the loss of prestige in the FA Cup for the big sides has been balanced out by the ‘glory’ of finishing 7th in the league to make it into Europe. 

So what does anyone else think? Is the FA Cup what it used to be? better or worse?