The National Academy of Writing http://www.lhds.bcu.ac.uk/english/diploma-writing is located in the English Department at Birmingham City University, Sixth Floor Baker Building, City North Campus, Perry Barr.

Editor-in-Chief of literary and artistic website Birmingham Words http://www.birminghamwords.co.uk/
Hosted by Birmingham City University. Re-launching this autumn, calling for submissions in a couple of months so please check out the site.

Recently wrote first novel, DOG Sharon - a satirical, feminised reworking of the messiah myth, set in contemporary Birmingham. Writing a second, White Punks on Dope - a story of espionage and murder set locally in 1978, concerning smallpox, punk music and illicit drugs.

Gary Haywood Company: New Grey Whistle Test phone 07766 028 582 email gary@newgreywhistletest.co.uk web www.newgreywhistletest.co.uk

Gary highlighted the work they are doing to help unsigned acts. The New Grey Whistle Test’s whole idea is to carry on from the BBC Old Grey Whistle Test which gave a media platform to the likes of Led Zeppelin, Simply Red, John Lennon, Dr Hook, Jimi Hendrix and countless others. The New Grey Whistle Test has a slight change in that it gives a much needed media platform to new bands and solo artists working with today's technology.....the Internet. If you are a local band looking for exposure, then get in touch with Gary Haywood to find out more.

Rhonagh O'Donnell

Rhonagh O'Donnell
PRESS THE RED BUTTON
For the BBC Guide to Interactive Broadcasting

To help the region’s creative businesses exploit the growth of new digital platforms, July’s Creative Networks featured a special guide to interactive broadcasting, by BBC Audio & Music Interactive producer, Rhonagh O’Donnell.

Rhonagh firstly explained that the department in which she works at the BBC, Audio & Music Interactive was previously known as Radio & Music Interactive. This department supports BBC Music Entertainment TV and Classical Music TV programmes, as well as the BBC’s ten national radio stations.

Rhonagh’s small team sits within BBC Audio & Music Interactive. They produce extra footage that is broadcast under the red button on TV during festivals such as Glastonbury, Reading, Leeds and Radio 1’s Big Weekend.

Radio 1 and Radio 2 gigs are also sometimes filmed on occasions. You can watch these gigs by pressing the red button on a BBC TV channel or on the BBC Radio station website. The edit is normally turned round in two days – to match the radio station transmission date – so the DJ can encourage radio listeners to press red on TV to watch highlights of the gig.

As real video on demand doesn’t yet exist on most forms of Digital TV (apart from a couple of examples like BBC iPlayer on Virgin, and some content on BT Vision and Tiscali) – the ability to broadcast programmes on repeat, or in ‘a loop’ on red button provides an interim solution.

This means that any narrative has to be fairly loose (easy if it’s a concert, harder if it’s a speech programme) – as the audience can join at any point.

In this way, we, the audience, are able to dip in and out of such video content. Most importantly, whether a broadcast has visual content or is limited to audio only, BBC Audio & Music is able to provide us with options to interact or get more choice on elated content of different platforms.

Rhonagh spoke about the BBC’s shrinking budgets, but pointed out that with something like the coverage of Glastonbury, if a selection of bands are being filmed on various stages it is obviously more cost effective to provide us with the opportunity to view as much as we’d like to see as often as possible – i.e. during the event by pressing the red button, and after the event, by watching extended artist sets on demand on the BBC Glastonbury website.

During the event days (Fri 27 – Sun 29 June), BBC red button broadcast from 7pm until 2am on Friday and Saturday and from 5pm until 2am on Sunday.

However, there are only so many channels/streams available on red button (a maximum of two on Freeview and five on Sky/Virgin per Red Button service). As was the case this year, there are often other events competing for broadcast. With only a limited amount of bandwidth available, as Wimbledon and Euro 2008 clashed with the Glastonbury weekend, not all red button channels were dedicated to the festival all of the time.

According to the latest published figures, 87.2% of UK households now have a digital television as their main set. Rhonagh highlighted the fact that there is a difference between the viewing experience depending on whether one is using Freeview, Sky or Virgin. With their greater bandwidth, Sky and Virgin offer a minimum five screens with a menu that covers a wider range. 9.2M households have Freeview, 3.5M subscribe to Virgin services and 8.3M to Sky – so more people get the fullest viewing experience.

Rhonagh also talked about the method of estimating the overall number of red button viewers. It is calculated on the amount of time a viewer remains watching a particular piece of video. Conventional BARB TV viewing figures measure the average number of viewers per programme at any one particular minute. The figures for Red Button record whether the audience stays for one minute plus or three minutes plus. In addition to giving an ‘average number of minutes watched’ – which for Glastonbury 2008 red button was 39.7 mins.

The published figures show that although audience numbers for Glastonbury were down this year (from 2.6 million Sky viewers in 2007 to 2.15 million in 2008), people actually viewed for longer than they did last year. In 2007, 61% of viewers stayed watching for more than three mins. In 2008 this rose to 69%. BARB can only measure Sky viewers, so we normally double this figure to get an audience across all digital TV.

In addition to telling us how Glastonbury music performance was filmed and edited, Rhonagh described how the links between the music performance on red button were produced.

On Friday, the red button presenter was Shaun Keaveny, from BBC Radio 6 Music breakfast show. He interviewed bands and provided some comedy moments (e.g. bands singing 30 seconds of a song they’d never sing at Glastonbury).

Comedian Phil Nichol, who headlined the Cabaret Tent at Glastonbury, presented red button on Saturday and Sunday – showing us the non-music side of the festival through his links.

Since there is often a complaint of too many presenters talking too much of the time, the links were kept to between 30 and 90 seconds. We saw some examples which were extremely entertaining and surprisingly professional considering there was no editing and few crew. One of the performers for a link was a sword swallower which of course presents a Health & Safety nightmare for any producer!

Online Forums have made much of the repetition of big name bands and not enough exposure being given to the smaller bands. As Rhonagh had previously pointed out, budgets are limited so that less filming, potentially took place this year. However, they will definitely take that on board for forthcoming festivals. With the broadcast of the Reading & Leeds Festival (22-24 August) and the BBC Electric Proms (22-26 October) yet to come, the BBC’s Audio & Music department has to pay attention to such feedback so that it can make improvements when necessary.

Rhonagh also talked about the challenges of filming and broadcasting other music performances in tandem with BBC Radio, such as Radio 1’s Foo Fighters Friday, which took place throughout the day in Brighton in August 2007, which culminated in a gig at the Concorde2 venue for 500. This was achieved without the conventional outside broadcast truck, a limited number of cameras and with no ingest time for editing. It was broadcast in a loop over seven days on red button, as was a similar White Stripes performance. The White Stripes was recorded at the BBC’s Maida Vale premises where there was more control over the broadcast infrastructure. These broadcasts of Radio Station gigs pull in audiences ranging from under 100,000 Sky viewers up to 200,000 or occasionally 300,000 viewers.

Similarly, BBC Interactive recently worked with Radio 2 on a special Neil Diamond gig, recorded in the BBC Radio Theatre, in Broadcasting House London. This was the most successful single-artist session ever on BBC red button and recorded 400,000 Sky viewers, 75% of whom were tuned in for three minutes plus.

Rhonagh also showed some interesting clips of more experimental work done with radio. There are now 10M people per week listening to radio on a device that also has a screen.

With this in mind, work has been done that marries visuals with speech so that consumers have the choice of a richer experience and more interaction with the broadcast. The Radio 4 ‘City Speaks’ Afternoon Play project connected filmmakers with radio drama writers & producers in this way. It was sponsored by the Arts Council and Film London. The results, based on a Peter Ackroyd story, were broadcast in March 2008 as visualised radio drama (6 x 15 minute plays) and shown as a feature film in the National Film Theatre. The plays can be watched at http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A33301784

We also saw some hilarious clips from Paul Whitehouse & Charlie Higson’s Radio 4 comedy Down the Line, a spoof phone-in show where Red Button was used to draw a TV audience to Radio 4 comedy by providing a 15 minute filmed ‘making of’ documentary. This was promoted via a TV marketing campaign. Rhonagh also presented examples of how some of the BBC’s Big Screens in our major cities had showcased this more experimental content.

After a brief Question and Answer session with the audience and ending her very thorough and entertaining presentation with a look into the future, Rhonagh again emphasised the fact there are limitations as to what can be done with the technology. She stated "There are always plusses and minuses, for example, with the advent of High Definition broadcast there will be one less Freeview channel available for red button – but there is much to look forward to in terms of more content being available on demand."

The audience was indeed privileged to have attended one of the highlight events of our Calendar thus far and the applause demonstrated what a big thank you we all felt Rhonagh deserved for taking the time to pass on her knowledge and experience in such an entertaining way.

Rhonagh is a great ambassador for the BBC and she is also a champion of the ‘indies’ and content producers everywhere. She made many references throughout the night to colleagues who may be interested in hearing from any of us who feel we should pitch to BBC Audio & Music - and has thoughtfully provided the following contact details:

Amy Taylor: amy.taylor@bbc.co.uk
Amy commissions independent companies for BBC Audio & Music Interactive work.
This work can be filming & editing music sessions, games development work and many other things… http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/radio/network/interactive.shtml

Rhonagh O’Donnell: Rhonagh.odonnell@bbc.co.uk
For freelance camera operators, directors/vision mixers/editors

Rhonagh will pass CVs to Stephania, the Production Executive from the BBC Music Entertainment TV department. This department films the radio gigs that are broadcast on red button, and also produces much of the BBC’s music TV coverage.