Before we get going in need to clarify that the gremlins in the post title refer to office/equipment gremlins and not the rather awesome 80s movie of the same name. Although rather misleadingly I couldn’t resist including an image of the electric gremlin from Gremlins 2.
The little electric fella above is however a good visual representation of the chaos that erupted at Preston FM on Tuesday morning as myself and Tom began the second installment of our social media radio show, The Social. To give you a bit of background myself and Tom had been speaking to the folks at Preston FM a few months ago about doing a social web orientated show, the station liked the idea and we were asked to attend some radio training to cover the basics on radio production and live editing. The training was great fun and had us bursting with ideas for the show. It was however rather brief, especially when it came to some of the technical bits. We had bravely/naively opted to do our three trial shows live rather than prerecorded our thinking being that you couldn’t have a social media show that people couldn’t interact live with.
The first show was a storming success with only a couple of fumbles and lots of elated high fiving after we were done. Result.
Tuesdays show didn’t pan out in quite the same way. It seems that unbeknownst to myself and Tom the radio gremlins had been in the studio before us and changed a random selection of the settings on the mixing desk. Unfortunately being complete newbies to the world of radio we were at a loss to rectify the situation and had to begin the show without being able to hear ourselves or tell if we were broadcasting! After a number of phone calls to our dedicated regular listenership of Tom’s good lady we discovered we were live and were able to muddle through the rest of the show.
Despite the gremlin attack we are both looking forward to the next show, although I think being allowed to choose our own playlist may have a lot to do with that! It occurred to me that there are a number of similarities between radio and business; preparation is essential, but despite all the preparation in the world things will still go wrong, an ability to think on your feet is desirable and they are both a lot of fun.
We are currently in the process of editing the first two shows as podcasts which will then be available via our Soundcloud and Facebook pages.
