SPEAKER_03 0:02

Hello and welcome back to the Download, the Claremont podcast, where we reflect on school life, learning, and the experiences that bring our community together. This week has been full of creativity, performance, and hands-on learning, from coding at Legoland to an incredible year four production. Let's take a look at what's been happening across the school. The children took part in a workshop led by the educational team where they explored how to use Lego block coding to design and build their own funfares. It was a brilliant opportunity to bring computers to life in the real-world setting.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

It sounded really fun being able to build and code at the same time. Using Lego makes coding feel more creative and hands-on. It's cool that you can control what happens using code.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

Experiences like this show how technology and creativity can work together, turning ideas into something real. Meanwhile, Year Four have been busy performing in their fantastic production of Viking Thunder. The children have worked incredibly hard learning their lines, rehearsing their scenes, and remembering their stage positions to bring the story to life. Well done to everyone involved. Both the Legoland trip and the year full production remind us how important it is to try new things and challenge ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Performing or presenting can actually be really enjoyable once you get into it.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

Exactly. Growth often comes from giving something a go. Becky, thank you so much for joining us here today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming in. It's cooler in the pod today, actually, which is quite nice. I thought it was going to be very hot in here, but it's actually quite nice. It's a nice temperature today.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

This is a great temperature. Actually, in our studio, we like to keep it cold because it keeps everybody awake and on our toes. So actually, this is the best way to do a podcast, to be in a cold room.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

Perfect. Do you hear that, guys? Must stay awake during the recording today. And to start with, can you tell us what a technical producer actually does and what your role involves drawing live radio shows?

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Okay, this is going to be quite a long answer, but essentially to start with, I'm keeping us on air. So I don't want to take the station off air. So I go into work and I have to remember that we have over a million listeners and um nothing must go wrong. So that is part of my job. But you need to forget that the moment that you sit down in front of your desk, I've got a desk with 24 faders. I've usually got about four or five up at any time, but sometimes you can have more than that up. It depends if you've got an outside broadcast or something like that happening. You're dealing with levels, um, you're talking to presenters in their ears to give them time checks. I have five screens in front of me. So the first screen I have is called a burly screen, and it's got the news on it because I uh do all the junctions for news readers at the top and the bottom of the hour. Also, on that, I have an editing suite. Um, I may have to turn something around very quickly. Uh presenter may say, Oh, I really want this music bed out of the next advert, and so I need to edit something very quickly off YouTube. Um, what else do I do? I have another screen which is called Zeta, and that is a playout screen. And on that screen is where you hear all the adverts that you hear in your car or on the radio. They come out of that. Also on that screen, there is something called macros because we are now a TV station as well. Most radio stations are we're live, and those macros have to be in with our audio so that our visuals play out. Then I have another screen, one of the most important screens, the volume screen. If that is peeking at red, it is shouting at me, and it means that you and your car are hating what you're hearing. It's gonna sound muffled, it's gonna sound terrible. So I need to make sure it sounds okay. Then on the next screen, I have what the vision mixer can see. And they're the person that goes to, you know, a wide shot or a single shot, and they're playing clips out as well. So I need to be looking at that for them as well, making sure that's running okay. And then my last screen shows me split ads across the country. So you're not just listening all to the same adverts. Scotland are having different adverts, the Midlands are having different adverts, we're having different advert adverts down here south. And then also on that screen is callers. So anybody that's calling in, I can see who's going to be on and what fader I need to put up for that. And then there are just a few more screens that I need to also be aware of. Is uh we have uh news above us, so for any breaking news and sports news going on, and sometimes this morning if it's a quiet day, but that doesn't happen very often. So there's quite a few things going on at once.

SPEAKER_03 5:53

Oh my goodness, imagine that all those screens to be aware of at the same time as being live. Um we have the luxury of this is recorded and it goes out afterwards, but um those live things that happen, um you know what it's like when we're doing a live show or all the the performance that year four are doing at the moment. If your line goes wrong, oh my goodness, there's people listening. So it's yeah, I can see how there's a lot of pressure there for you.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

It can be a bit nerve-wracking, but I actually love that.

SPEAKER_03 6:18

Yeah, it sounds really fun. Um, so you work in live in uh in a live environment um where things don't always run so smoothly. Um, what skills would you say help you stay calm and focused? Because it sounds really hectic, particularly when there's a lot of stuff going on and all this breaking news uh that's just broken. Um how do you stay leveled when other people might not be?

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yeah, you have to not panic. Yeah. Okay, so you just have to not panic. Um, you've got five people in the control room with you. So you've got the producer, and then behind you, you've got the assistant producer, the broadcast assistants who's picking up the phone, and you've got the vision mixer. You don't want any of them speaking to you. You have to zone in on the producer and yourself and both figure it out together what's going wrong. You almost have to put yourself into slow motion if anything goes wrong. You have to remember to take a breath and deal with what's happening in that moment. Sometimes the whole system can go down, but I have backup. So I just have to make sure every day, say we've got an outside broadcast or we've got somebody talking down a line and it drops, that I've got spare audio, spare music, that the presenters are where they might have to come in and chat. Sometimes, if the yeah, if the adverts don't go, I'll have to have a quick chat in the presenter's ear and just say, please, can you keep filling for the moment? And hopefully they've got a co-presenter because if they haven't, then they do look quite nervous, but most of the time they do. So yeah, it's just that don't panic.

SPEAKER_03 7:42

Awesome. Um, well, um guys, you've got some questions from from you, Lot, that I'm sure you've kind of come up with. I'm gonna pass it over to the digital explorers. So any questions that you have for Becky?

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Tell me a funny or interesting story that has happened to you while working at Talk Sport.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Okay, well, this has happened on the morning show. Um, it has been funny and interesting at the same time and made news as well. So it's quite interesting when you'll experience that and then it makes the press. So we've got a presenter on the morning show uh who doesn't really like one of uh the boxing promoters that comes in. And on air, they had this like really famous argument that went on for about an hour, but that happened in the break as well. So the ad was ads were playing out, and we could see them arguing, and nobody knew what to do. And then when you're coming out of an ad, I actually had to fade the faders up and let them continue arguing on air. I mean, it's probably one of our most listened to shows, to be fair. But in that instance, you have to make a call with the producer and decide do we just put them up while they're still arguing? And um, yeah, we decided to. We thought it would make great radio. Um, thankfully, they weren't saying anything bad. Um, but that was funny and just quite an amazing experience at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

Oh wow, yeah. I bet they weren't really expecting to come back up on uh uh up live, but uh yeah, good call. Well done.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

You sometimes you just gotta do it. It's very interesting. What makes you interested in working in radio and technology?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Um, I wish I'd actually known about it a lot sooner. Um I trained as an actress, so I did a lot of theatre and adverts and voiceovers and work like that, um, and sort of fell into the job that I have now. I saw an advert on the stage, uh, which is an acting newspaper, uh, for a radio station called Hayes FM that wanted uh people to come in and be presenters and had they had any experience in acting or presenting. And I thought, oh, I've got a transferable skill. I'd always loved radio, it was my favourite thing that I did at drama school. We used to do radio plays, we had a studio there, and I absolutely loved it. And I guess I'd really never thought about presenting. Um, and I went in and I got given the evening show on a Thursday, which was arts and culture, and I had to learn a desk like you've got in front of you, Mr. Bates, and I had to use that while I was interviewing as well. So I got desk experience, so that was really exciting, and also I had to do the play out system as well. So I was learning all these transferable skills that I didn't know that were gonna come in really handy, and that was a really fun job where I was uh interviewing actors and musicians and all sorts of different people that were in the arts. Um, I then I then started interviewing bands. So this becomes quite a long answer, I'm afraid. I started interviewing bands as part of that job as well to try and get people to come into the radio station. And I met somebody from the same company that was interviewing bands at a gig who said they worked at Talksport and they were news reading and they said, Oh, they need people for the technical side of things. Can you work aboard? And I was like, Yes, I can. Um, and that's really how I ended up where I was, because I went and did some work experience in my late 20s, so it was really a change of career, and absolutely loved it. And that's how I got into the technical side of things, so it's a bit convoluted, but yeah, I got to it.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

It's so funny how it kind of comes around like that, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Hi, um, what's the most exciting part of working on a live show?

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Oh goodness me, there are so many things that make working on a live show exciting. I think the main thing is you never know what's gonna happen, and that's why I like it. And this sort of relates back to my acting career. I love the adrenaline of being on stage. And when you are doing live radio, it's the same thing. You never know what's gonna happen, you never know what somebody's gonna say. You're gonna be surprised at quite a lot of moments, you're gonna get breaking news, and you've got to deal with that in the moment, and that never gets boring. I've been doing this role for 14 years this year, and I am still not bored, and that is a real achievement I feel in the job. It's yeah, it's really exciting a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Yeah. Yeah, that must be nice because um you get to see everything first, pretty much. So, like before everyone else hears it.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

So Well, it's funny you should say that. Actually, we do, because we live in a delay. So actually, uh most radio stations are about 14 seconds in delay. We are. We have so we have a special uh dump button. So if anybody says a bad word or something that's illegal or libelous or something that really shouldn't go out, we have a little special button called the dump button, and we can press that twice to get rid of something. So yeah, I am actually hearing it 14 seconds before you are.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

So the live radio that you hear in your cars is not really live, it's 14 seconds behind what's actually coming out. How interesting is that? Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, it's really cool. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

Why is it important for girls to see women working in technical roles like yours?

SPEAKER_00 12:36

I think still now we still think of guys in technical roles. And you know, to be fair, in in radio there are a lot of men that work in it, and there are actually more women that are working now in radio. Um, when I started at Talk Sport all those years ago, uh there was about three of us. Now I would say it's nearly 50-50. That's right. Um, which shows how how it's how it's things are changing, and I think now there's more availability for women. I work in a sports station, and I think women's football is a big thing, and I think because female sport is being promoted more, we're getting more women in the workplace where I am. And I do think that girls should look at technical roles. Um, it doesn't just have to be for guys.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

No, I I totally agree. It's an absolute mixed bag across the board, and I think that kind of uh testament to you guys here. We have a very much split down the middle boys and girls joining the club, which is fantastic. Ten years ago, I think it would have been a bit different, but now I'm really happy that we've got girls here too, guys. Yeah, next question then, please.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

What happens if something goes wrong on the broadcast? Okay, so we have the magic dump button, which I've just mentioned, which is amazing. So we've got 14 seconds. So we've got seven seconds initially, which we dump. We might be able to fix something in those seven seconds. It's amazing what you can restart in seven seconds, or you can get a presenter to talk and get things moving. But if not, you've got 14 seconds to try and sort things out and dump things, or what what we do is we play audio out or we play a bit of music out so that we never have dead air. You don't ever want to have dead air. If you see the silence alarm, then you need to get an engineer in. An engineer in, I mean.

SPEAKER_03 14:18

Quick. Yeah, very quick. Very quickly, as fast as you can. Great question. Well done.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

What's something that might surprise people about working in radio? I think that a lot of people think if you work in the media, we're all out to get each other. And actually, we're not. We are such a good team where I work. Everybody's there to help each other. You know, if you're looking for some breaking news or you need to find some audio for an edit, or you need some advice, everybody's there to speak to in in my workplace, which is really great. So I would say I think, yeah, we need to stop that stereotype of media that everybody's sort of against each other. We're definitely all for each other and all on the same team, and we want the best show every single day.

SPEAKER_03 15:01

Yeah, you've got to work together, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

Um, otherwise it just all falls at all.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

It was fall at heart so badly.

SPEAKER_03 15:08

Right, yeah, that's nice question. Thank you so much. That was really nice thinking. Um, who's next?

SPEAKER_00 15:12

How long have you been working at Talksport for? I've been there for 14 years, um, but I haven't always been doing the White and Jordan show. Um, I started doing the overnights. I did that for two years, and that is a very long shift where you start at 10 pm and you finish at 6 a.m. When you start in radio, you have to be willing to take all the weird and strange shifts. So, you know, sometimes you'd work like nine days in a row and you'd be doing a lot of nights, or you do evenings, or you do weekends. Because I've been there quite a while now. I'm lucky I get to work in the daytime. I also work on the afternoon show as well, which is Hawkesby and Jacobs, and that's a really light magazine show. So in the morning, you know, you've got hard-hitting journalism. Then in the afternoon, the listeners can relax a little bit, have a little have a little laugh, and uh, you know, we've got comedians on and and actors on, and so it's a bit more relaxed.

SPEAKER_03 15:58

You've had quite a lot of quite incredible people on your show, haven't you? Who are some of those people that the the children and the listeners might might know?

SPEAKER_00 16:05

I'm not sure if all the kids will know a lot of the people that I met. Um, really excitingly, I met Torflin Dean, who won a gold medal for figure skating, and um that was an amazing moment. And I think I hugged them both very tightly, and I'm sure they thought I was mad, but they were really kind and chatted to me. Um, we had Jimmy Anderson in, he's you know one of our best bowlers ever. That was quite amazing to have him in and him talking about his career. And these people that come in are really happy to chat to us in the studio before they go on air because they're normal people and they get nervous. So we're there to chat to them before they go in and talk to the presenters to relax them as well. But um, yeah, you hear lots of stories that you probably wouldn't necessarily hear on air, and that's really nice to hear too. I think my mum was most excited. I need to mention my mum, obviously. Uh Rod Stewart came in.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

Oh wow, that's pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Yeah, and not not often do people from different floors in the building come down, but it was like living in a fishbowl. When Rod came in, like everybody was in. He's really good friends with with Jim White. Um, and so Jim like pulled in a favour and said, Please, please come into the show, and that was absolutely amazing. We didn't get him to sing, unfortunately. Um, but he was absolutely brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

That's really cool that he was inside and he's kind of there and involved in it. Yeah, it's really good.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

You do actually meet really fun people in the lift. So the other week I met John Cleese. Really? Yeah, and that was just amazing. And yeah, he's a really funny guy who was cracking jokes all the way up to the 17th floor, and I just couldn't believe it. And he walked out, he was being interviewed at Virgin Radio, which is on the same floor as us, and um yeah, I just wished him luck with his interview. And I have these sort of surreal moments where who am I gonna meet in the lift this morning? So that's also quite exciting as well.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

And it is easy to forget that they are real people as well. Uh-huh. And you do kind of then go, Oh, actually, you are you are quite normal and just have a normal chat with you. Oh no, you you you did just have breakfast, didn't you? Yeah, you're the same as me. Yeah, it's very strange. Um, awesome. Uh, who's next? Another question, then please. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

With the dump button, how does it know which bit of the podcast you want to delete?

SPEAKER_00 18:08

That is an excellent question.

SPEAKER_04 18:09

Question.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

And I'm not sure I can answer it completely because it's quite magical. Um, we call it a time machine at work, and I guess it just works like that. It's sort of a sort of a little time machine, and so it's it's ahead of what's happening and and can get rid of the airwaves. It's it slows things down. So if if you're listening in your car, you might hear something jump, and you'll think, oh, why did that happen? And you wouldn't really question it. So that's what the dump button does. It's sort of it's very clever at hiding what we've got rid of on air.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

Okay, have we got uh one more question, I believe. Uh yeah, there we go. Over to you.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Roughly how many people listen to your show? Well, it can change from day to day, but it is over a million, usually on the morning show. Wow. Yeah, it's a lot of people, and like I said earlier, it's best not to think about all those people listening in, otherwise, you'd be really worried all the time and all day. But it is really amazing that we have that many people listening in. And we can also see our numbers because we're a TV station as well. You can see what's being visualized and how many people are listening to that as well on YouTube, so you can get a good idea of numbers. But yeah, it's a lot of people. Yeah, that really is a lot.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

That's a lot. One day we will hit a million listeners. That is a lot. It would be good, right? It would be good.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Now it's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

Well, Becky, thank you so much for coming in. It's been really lovely to hear about kind of what you do and the work and how it connects with us here at school. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

Here are a few important notices before we finish. Some people took part in the general knowledge quiz at Tormead School in Guildford. There were 23 different teams, but only 13 different schools, and we were all playing for a big shiny silver trophy. We really enjoyed our time at Tourmead, and we really hope to do it again someday. Next week we have the Lambda exams and ESB exams taking place. Good luck to everyone involved. We also have an Easter show happening next week. Please remember to wear your house tops for the event. Good luck to everyone taking part in the exams. And don't forget your house tops for the Easter Trail.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

This week has shown us that learning can happen anywhere. Whether it's coding at Legoland, performing on stage, or hearing from someone working in a real-world career. Keep trying new things, keep building your confidence, and keep supporting each other along the way.