Student Radio is a bit like the “Under-21s” of the radio industry. Many people begin their careers there and it is where the industry will be looking for some of its next big names. It is a good place to get experience, build up your skill set and give things a try without the strict constraints that a full professional station would implement. I believe it’s also important for building up off-air skills as well such as networking, management and generally finding out how things work. Like in the ‘grown-up’ world of radio there are long-standing big dogs, loud upstarts and many that just keep going in the background. On both a personal and national level, some big things are happening in Student Radio over the next few months. In particular there are two totally separate events that I want to focus on in this blog.
The first will be happening at The IndigO2 on November the 9th, the 2011 Student Radio Awards. This is exactly what it says on the tin and is a big event in the UK Radio calender, there are even famous people there. It is an excellent place to showcase yourself and has helped launch the careers of people such as Greg James and Mark Crossley. Winning one is seen as the pinnacle of achievement at this level (one below actually getting a job) and thus it is always hotly contested. I’ve been lucky enough to attend as a nominee 3 times and even grabbed a bronze award once (2008 Best Newcomer, it’s totally on Wikipedia!
Last year I drove a bus there, snuck backstage and I even got to actually collect an award for someone else at my station, who was absent. It was an awkward experience, but it now means I have done pretty much everything at the awards except actually win one! Nevertheless, it’s a fun, glamorous night and the genuine enthusiasm for radio in the room can inspire even the most jaded of pros.
But last year I noticed something that really upset me. There have always been a few stations that do better than most others and as such there are always a few grumbles about bias, fixing and nepotism. I hold my hand up and admit that I made similar utterances a while back, but now I just accept that some stations probably win because they frequently make better radio. URN of Nottingham are one of these stations and they have won the biggest prize (Best Station) 3 times in the last 5 years.
Last year was one of those three and their victory came at the end of a night where they had already picked up over a third of the other awards. When they went to collect their final award all the industry tables at the front stood to give them a standing ovation, when their station manager was making his acceptance speech many of the student tables just carried on talking. I remember his speech, I had the manners to listen. You know why? Firstly, because that’s just the way my mama raised me. But also because when a guy has just orchestrated 6/14 awards at your industry’s biggest gathering then it’s in your best interests to SHUT UP AND LISTEN! The guy practically told us how they won! Whenever anybody joins the station they sit down with the
management and they decide on something to work on outside of their own show. It could be a set of jingles, an event, something for the website or anything else that the person feels they could help out with. That is their project, everyone has one and they work hard on it.
It’s simple and it clearly works. But few people listened, instead I heard people grumbling about how they always win, how they heard that some of the judges went there and how URN have loads more funding than everyone else. Now the last one really bothers me. Two reasons, the first one being that during a hungover chat with a former SRA Committee member a few months back he told me that the amount often quoted to me as being their budget wasn’t true. It would be rude of me to divulge numbers, but let’s just say what that they were rumoured to receive and what they actually get are two very different figures.
The second reason (which could apply to any of the grumbles really) is that it is accepting defeat before you’ve gone into battle, before you’ve even trained your troops. In short, it’s just an excuse. Instead of taking a critical look at your own station, you’re blaming the system and doing nothing pro-active. Last year we effectively did what URN did (not on purpose, we’re not that organised) and guess what, we had one of our best years in a long time! We had somebody who really took a lot of time on the marketing (learnt it all from scratch actually,) someone who got our street team going, someone who was passionate about putting on good events.
Basically, we had people who got up off their arse and did stuff because they cared about it. No CV fillers, nobody who just wanted the T-Shirt, nobody who would just sit and moan about how lucky other stations were. As a result, despite having 2/3 of our funding cut we made over £1500 from events, we had our highest number of members and we had our first ever 1000-listener show.
This effort built up to the second aforementioned event, later this week we will be putting on the biggest live music night at Surrey University in four years. Rizzle Kicks will be playing to a sold-out crowd of 800 in our 6th gig in just over a year. It is the culmination of the experience, effort and passion of many of our members all coming together. We started off by putting on shows with local bands, covering it well and marketing it heavily, gradually building up our networks and resources until we were able to put on something much bigger. Eighteen months ago there was no live music scene to speak of, after this show the station would’ve made approximately £5k from the scene that it created. I’m not bringing all this up to gloat (oh but it is fun to do so.) What I’m trying to show is that student radio is what you make of it. We’ve gone through a long period of transition and it only happened because we made it happen.
So if this year the usual suspects clean up at the awards again, maybe you should listen to what they have to say? Find their manager afterwards and have a chat with them. Find out what was so good about their station, how it was organised, what their goals were. Listen to the winning entries and try see what made them stand-out. Think about what you could learn from them that could be used to improve your shows, style or station. Don’t be too harsh with yourself but cast an honest eye over your work, are you really trying to do something special or are you just the Lord of your comfort zone? Yes some stations have more money than you, yes they have a lot of alumni in the industry and yes they have better equipment. Boo-hoo.
Every successful station started from nothing at some point. It is not luck that they are in a good position, some poor buggers worked exceptionally hard on it. Some people took the time to do more than just keep the place ticking over, they had a big plan and the balls to make it happen. Why not become one of those people for your station?
Andy has been involved with GU2 Radio at Surrey University for four years. He has had roles in management, events and press, as well as putting in hundreds of hours behind the mic. He is in his final year of an English
Literature degree and is looking for career opportunities for after University