Would you look at that!

It's been WAY too long since I last blogged.

Sadly there have been no radio-related developments over the summer, but I have enjoyed the sunshine! Hehe.

Anyway, It's back to work now, so I'll let you know if anything comes up!

George x

So if you were listening to my show earlier, you would have heard that next week will be my last on Radio Sonar. Yes I know, sad times.

But my time at Southampton Solent University is coming to an end, so so must my time at Radio Sonar.

Don't worry, this isn't the end for me! I will be back soon enough, filling your ears with the sound of music, and of course my voice!

See you soon x

I meant to type this on Wednesday, then I was going to do it on Thursday, and yes, then Friday, and finally here we are on Saturday.

RAG Week is a week of Raising and Giving (Hence the ‘RAG’ bit) money around universities around the country for charities.

Southampton Solent chose to raise money for Hampshire Fire and Rescue, in memory of the 2 fire-fighters who lost their lives in Shirley a few weeks ago.

There were three or four events that took place over the week, including ‘Take Me Out’ – a Solent take on the popular ITV1 dating show, and “Radio Sonar – Get me out of here”.

That’s where I came in.

Basically, Management at the station decided they were going to recruit 8/10 people to be “locked” in a box, and not released until we raised enough money.

This actually turned into the 10 people being split into pairs, each spending an hour and a half (the length of a radio show on Radio Sonar) in a Trampoline with the safety net on. The head of systems/tech set up an Outside Broadcast type thing, allowing Radio Sonar to be blasted across the carpark/outside seating area and two headphones/mics to allow interaction to the studio. And they moved a studio webcam to look out of a window into the ‘box’ and put the stream online for everyone to watch.

The whole idea was pretty good.

I kicked it off at 11am on Wednesday, with my normal show, occasionally ‘going live downstairs’ to talk to the guys in the box. And actually, as I’d managed to lose Andrew to the editing I should probably have been helping with, I thought it was one of the best shows I had produced all year!

We raised £87.57.

And I can’t decide if that was good or not.

I don’t know why, but I expected more. Not just more money, but more from the event. I mean, I never got to see the outside set-up before I finished my show, but I expected a lot more people to be hanging about. Especially as I had to set them a challenge whilst in the box (make up a dance routine to Five’s ‘Just Dance’), but when I got there, although the presenters had swapped, they hadn’t stuck around, and there was only one other member of the station there, and that was because we had a technical problem.

I mean, I know we all have things to do, lectures and stuff, but it was right outside the student union cafe/bar entrance, and although people were walking past fairly often, no one seemed to look twice.

Have your uni done any fund raising events that didn’t quite go to plan?

Sorry people! I've decided I don't want to be a Radio Dj anymore...

...April fools!

Well, that was rubbish wasn't it!

Just a quick post to say sorry I haven't posted lately, really.

Just a few updates:

My time at Play Radio ended few weeks ago due to increased need to complete my final major project etc at uni (After 2 weeks of Easter, there's only 5 weeks before it's all over!!)

I am in the process of signing up to RadioTalent.co.uk, more on that soon

I am hoping to sign up to a Yellow-Media course (see www.yellow-media.co.uk!) pretty soon, get myself sorted a real professional demo and experience 'on-air'.

I have applied for voluntary work/experience at Southampton Hospital's Radio station, and will continue over the next few months to apply to other stations across the South Coast.

Well, that's all for now, chat soon! x

Just added all my voice work and demos to date, to this site.

Just so you know.

x

Yesterday I spent a full THREE hours live on Radio Sonar (.co.uk)! That's a full normal shift you'd be on if you were on a real radio station.

And double what the average time you spend on a show on the uni station.

It was a good thing to do and get used to. If I want to get a real job on a real station, I need to be used to spending three hours plus in the studio, if not more; Sometimes new additions to stations get put on the graveyard 1-6am slot. That's a five hour slot on air.

Yesterday, I was joined on air by Andrew, someone on my course, and as we only found out we would be staying the extra hour and a half less than an hour into the original slot, we decided to research into what the show we were covering would have done.

It was good to be able to get experience in researching and coming up with content for your show. Because no one wants to just listen to music, news and adverts, with you introducing them. You've got to come up with stuff. What you did in the last 24hours, things the listeners would find interesting and useful, to provoke interaction and such.

I should do it for my own show more, really. I always think about making a clock (technical term for dividing up how each of your hours are going to look. It should be fairly easy, considering it's an hour and a half a week.

But the thing with Radio Sonar, is they only have a 2 minute news bulletin (with 10sec intro and outro) and a 20 advert each hour that we can't control. The other 57 minutes is literally ours to sort. On a real station, you'll have that, plus two or three 2/3min advert breaks every 15 mins or so, plus at peak times maybe a news bulletin on the half hour, and don't forget traffic and weather reports, too!

That takes up a lot of the time on the clock, once you put in 3 or 4 tracks in between that doesn't leave long to fill with your own stuff.

On radio sonar, you might average 20 songs per hour. On a real station, it's more like 10-15.

And it's a little pointless having a travel bulletin, when you're an online-only station.

Hey People.

Here comes my first proper blog.

I will be live on Radio Sonar (.co.uk) between 11-12:30pm

Tune in?

If you miss it, I always post my tracklists here: http://www.facebook.com/GeorgeMillerDJ?v=app_2347471856

Thanks x

Hello.

George here!

Here is my first blog post.

It's nothing special.

Keep checking back here. I'm likely to be posting updates on things I get up to and all things DJ!

Thanks
x