1 00:00 :: Head of News Hazel chats with Jon Bagnall, current VP Participation and Campuses
2 00:11 :: One of our Guild Election Week jingles
3 00:27 :: Laurence and Gareth, presenters of our Reggae & Baking show Wake & Bake, demonstrate how to vote using the Polling Booths.
4 00:41 :: Current Guild President Nick 'Welshy' Davies talks to students and Guild President candidate Nic Craig in the Street.
5 01:06 :: Head of News Amelia talks to James Gibson, candidate for AU President.
6 01:19 :: Tom Oberst from Hip Hop show "Songs For Your Mother" describing the scene in the Forum.
7 01:25 :: Samples of the individual packages made for the election candidates.
8 01:43 :: Guild Election Results Show
9 02:08 :: Samples of the Highlights Package four our Guild Election Debate Series.
10 02:44 :: Example of the "loop" - going from the interview room to the stage, and then back.

We at Xpression FM aimed to make our coverage of Guild Elections 2013 our most comprehensive and engaging ever, to familiarise students with this year’s candidates. 

Prior to the elections, our News Team assigned correspondents who would specialise in specific sabbatical positions, research on major issues and interview candidates running for that position. Meanwhile our Production Team made jingles (0:13/1:43) and packages (2:08), including individual candidate packages (1:25). They also made the debates and interviews available on our Elections mini-site: www.xpression.fm/exetervote.

 

Daytime (Mon-Fri, 10am–4pm)

Throughout the week, we were broadcasting from the Forum - the heart of campus and election campaigning (0:00). Each hour began with a bulletin and candidate interview, before our presenters (including Guild President Welshy) took over with their music, election-based features and commentary of the campaigns. With our RF microphone, presenters were free to roam around the Forum and interview passing students (0:27).

 

Debates (Sun-Thurs, 6pm–8pm)

Open to everyone, our live debates focused on the different roles, taking questions from the floor as well as Twitter via #ExeterVote.

Before the debate, correspondents and various guests joined our presenter Jack in the studio. Each candidate was then introduced using audio packages, before handing over to the debate. After the debate, Jack spoke to our social media correspondent and other guests for their analysis. Guests include the current sabbatical officers, elections officer and editors from other student media.

 

Results (Fri, 8.30pm–10.30pm)

Our coverage ended with the live results show in the Lemon Grove. Our correspondent Hazel reported from the stage where the results were announced, and our presenters Ben and Amelia anchored in the interview room backstage. Working with the elections officer, we planned the running order, which bouncing between the announcements on stage and interviews backstage. We lined up interviews with former sabbatical officers, campaign managers, and the first interview with the winners (2:45). 

 

Setup

We used ShoutCast for our Daytime OB and VOIP for our evening OBs. – both solutions were accessible to us, and suitable for our needs. While ShoutCast has better audio quality, VOIP’s lower latency and support for conference calls, “return audio” and chat messaging allowed us to transition between locations smoothly.

This year’s coverage involved months of planning and coordinating between our News, Production, Marketing and Presenting teams, as well as candidates, Guild and University staff. Overall, we believe our coverage was thorough and engaging.

2013 SRA: GEWeek (Best OB/Live)

TRACKLIST
1 00:00 :: Voxes at a pre-drinks gathering
2 00:07 :: Introduction from presenters/Heads of News Hazel and Amelia
3 00:40 :: Feature (Sample): Lad Culture in the Music scene in Exeter
4 01:16 :: Feature (Sample): Lad Culture in Social Media
5 02:38 :: Interview: Original Sin Battle of the Halls girls
6 03:02 :: Caller: Listener representing Original Sin
7 03:19 :: Debate: Lad Culture in Exeter - Does the Guild recognise it as a problem?
8 03:40 :: Caller: Another listener representing Original Sin
9 03:53 :: Social Media Interaction
10 04:20 :: Interview: Drinking Culture in Exeter - Interview with David Wall
11 04:38 :: Feature (Sample): Drinking Culture in Exeter - Anonymous accounts of initiations
12 05:09 :: Interview with John Freer from the University's Estate Patrol.
13 05:19 :: Interview with Jesse Wilson, Exeter University Association Football Club Mens 1st XI Team Captain
14 05:35 :: Interview with Phil Attwell (University's Director of Sport)
15 05:41 :: Interview with Holly Gottlieb (AU Exec) and Nick Davies (Guild President)


WRITTEN ENTRY
At the beginning of 2012 the XpressionFM news team wanted to produce a one-off programme targeted specifically at the student audience about their experiences and knowledge of Lad Culture. 

 

The Idea

The idea started with XpressionFM’s Heads of News, Hazel Morgan and Amelia Jenkinson, who felt that lad culture as an accepted, unchallenged part of university life should be interrogated. University campuses are increasingly dominated by gender stereotypes, drinking, and sexism, particularly evidenced and propagated in social media, night life and peer pressure. Lad culture negatively affects female students who become targets but also male students who are put under pressure to act in a certain way, often to drink heavily, “banter” and sleep around. XpressionFM wanted to give Exeter university students a chance to voice their concerns about this culture on campus. We wanted the realities of lad culture to be discussed openly and brought into the student consciousness. Not only could we give students a forum to discuss their problems but we also wanted the student body, the Athletics Union and the Students’ Union to recognise that lad culture is a problem that students have to deal with, and one that needs to be confronted and addressed.

 

Format 

The show was presented by the Heads of News, who also planned the show and wrote the script. Our Head of Production Ronald Liong produced the show, including guest management. Some of the news team were also present during the show to conduct live interviews and manage social media.

We produced a lot of our material pre-broadcast, starting our research at the start of October. The show consisted of the presenters’ live links and interaction with listeners between pre-recorded and edited features produced by the members of the News Team. This meant we could have a rich diversity of quality content as we wished to keep the level of the show’s journalism and production values high. 

We structured the show in two halves, with a debate halfway through to signpost the show clearly for the listener. We thought this would be the best way to cover the issues that our research had highlighted. Representatives of the Guild and the Athletics Union also sat in on the show and participated in a live interview at the end. The show was therefore in four stages:

Lad Culture and its relation to sexism, with particular reference to music and clubbing (0:40), lad culture’s online manifestations, (1:15), local club promoters Original Sin (2:29) and the SSB (3.12).
Live Debate (3:19) between the Guild’s Welfare Officer, a Gender and Equality Society member and two students – a self-defined Lad and someone who felt lad culture is a problem.
Lad Culture and its links with drinking culture, with particular reference to initiations (4.15), AU clubs (5.18) and University knowledge of lad culture (5.34).
Live Interview (5.40) with the Guild President and a member of the AU exec to ask them what they planned to do about Lad Culture with the information we had provided in mind. 
 

Gathering show content

Members of the news team each concentrated on an aspect of lad culture and explored it by collecting interviews, gathering vox pops and recording links. The news team worked closely as a unit with frequent meetings to share ideas and contacts. As lad culture had not been confronted by Exeter students before a lot of our material came from sharing our own experiences and putting each other in contact with our other friends who had similar experiences. We also gathered information through our emphasis on promotional marketing and through direct involvement with the student body.  To facilitate this we set up this Facebook Page for discussion: 

http://www.facebook.com/ExeterLadCulture

Posters used to market the show are also attached, which we created to provoke a reaction from students and provide them with the details of the page. Views posted by students on the Facebook Page were recorded with voice actors and played out during the show. This enabled us to expose lad culture’s impact on real students’ experiences and made the show really speak to our listeners. 

 

Our Challenge: To focus on student experience & encourage debate

We tried to focus on issues that we felt most affected Exeter students, giving an Exeter perspective to this national trend. Although lad culture is a national issue, there are particular examples in Exeter that we felt needed discussion. We examined the way our student newspaper handled lad culture and local clubs’ promotional tactics, including ‘Original Sin’, club night promoters who conducted a social media campaign involving naked female students (two of whom we interviewed on the show). University events also came under scrutiny, such as the infamous Safer Sex Ball which made it to national press later that year. 

We actively sought to source information direct from students to help our research develop and create a more in-depth investigation. To truly represent students we collected as many student interviews and vox pops as possible, including Guild student representatives, members of the AU, sports captains and social secretaries, local DJ’s, members of societies and other students who felt affected by lad culture. The student experiences our investigation uncovered directly shaped the show. For example in our research it soon became clear that students often recounted experiences of club “initiations” when discussing lad culture in Exeter.  We therefore set about collecting “initiation” stories from students (04:38).  The existence of initiations is hushed up in Exeter, with students banned from talking about their experiences by both the AU and sports captains.  Our journalism — often undercover — revealed the true situation at Exeter.

The show elicited a huge listener response during broadcast. Listeners tweeted using #ExeterLadCulture and we received numerous calls to the show. Many of these calls were from people who had originally declined interview, such as local club night organisers. Most importantly the show provided our listeners the chance to share their experiences and opinions and uncover the pervasion of lad culture on campus.

2013 SRA: Lad Culture Show (Best Journo)

First came the idea. Let’s do a 24-hour-long broadcast for Children in Need! We’ll call it Xpression FM’s Big Broadcast. Then came the question – who would face the challenge of staying awake on air for 24 hours? Enter George Graham and Gareth Jones. These two brave (or foolish) presenters agreed to be guests on 24 consecutive hour-long shows.

Features

Our imaginative Heads of Events Lauren and Freya created a range of special fun features that were integrated into the presenters’ shows alongside their own regular features to get George and Gareth directly involved in every hour. These included:

50 Shades of Gareth and George: A game in which Gareth and George read out facts about themselves for the other to guess whether they were true or false. Cue appropriately steamy jingles.

The Phys Whiz Quiz: Gareth, a fourth year Physics student, attempted to answer Physics questions while filling his mouth with marshmallows. A special Xpression mixture of science and silliness.

Charity Wax: The inevitable charity wax! A brave volunteer answered Accounting questions and had a section of his suitably hairy legs waxed as the penalty for each wrong answer.

News or No News: A series of true-or-false news items were read out and the guests had to decide which were legitimate stories.

Production

We had six four-hour slots throughout the show. Our producers made sure that everything progressed smoothly and were on hand for anything George and Gareth might need throughout the broadcast.

Social Media

We kept listeners updated on our progress via Twitter and a dedicated Facebook page, ensuring that we had an active and involved audience. We frequently posted photos and videos, catching George and Gareth in action dancing to Gangnam Style and attempting the Bourbon Biscuit Challenge.

Jingles

Our Production Team created jingles that were played throughout the broadcast and in the days leading up to the event, including jingles produced for the various features.

Continuity

With 24 different hosts over the broadcast it was important to ensure that each hour was well-linked. We did this with pre-recorded ‘Coming Up’ announcements at the end of each hour to make our listeners aware of our schedule and Big Brother-style jingles, such as ‘It is 3pm in the Big Broadcast studio’ (Geordie accent included), to be played at the start of each individual show. Each hour had the same format for the first and last five minutes, with George and Gareth introducing each new host on the hour and ending each hour on donation and Twitter updates (and updates on their wellbeing!).

Charity

As well as creating an entertaining broadcast for Xpression’s listeners, it was important to keep our focus on the charity that inspired the broadcast and our fundraising aims. We directed listeners to our Just Giving page and used stories from the BBC Children In Need website to help appeal for donations. We were overwhelmed by the response and generous donations given by students, friends and family. We soon realised that our original target of £200 would be dramatically exceeded. The broadcast raised over £1000 and gave our presenters the opportunity to showcase their talents in shows ranging from sports and news shows to music and chat shows.

As a team we all hugely enjoyed being involved in the Big Broadcast and we believe that translated to our listeners. The output was both diverse and engaging and we hope to build on our success and create even more exciting broadcasts in the coming year.

2013 SRA: Big Broadcast (Best Ent)

Edited by: Alex Manning.

1 00:00 :: Sign or No Sign
2 01:02 :: Interview with Little Fears
3 01:28 :: Tweets
4 01:56 :: Pun Run
5 02:11 :: Random Fact Generator
6 02:28 :: Harlem Shake or Trouser Snake
7 02:46 :: Xpression's Top Tip

2013 SRA: Chart Show

AWARDED 1st PLACE IN XMEDIA AWARDS FOR Best Use of Production, Imagery or Design
Guild Election Week 2013
Hazel Morgan, Amelia Jenkinson, Ronald Liong, Genevieve Ladd and the Xpression FM Production Team*

This year, the Production Team went out of their way to give this year’s elections a distinct sound.

Weeks before the elections, we made the recordings needed for the Guild Election Sound Package, featuring different voice (consistent with the Station Sound). From this, promos were made for presenters to play on their shows.
> XpressionFM Coverage: featuring clips from our 2012 coverage (0:00-0:54)
> VoteFest (0:54-1:35)

We then got the candidates in for interviews. These were posted online, put into positioners and played at our Outside Broadcasts (OB). 

The weekend before the Elections, the team came together for a Production Session, where we made the sound package, including:
> Hour openers: For the debates (cut in the Demo: 2:23-2:48) and results show (2:54-3:05), 
> Positioners: For each candidate/sabb, we grabbed clips from their interviews and put them over a music track of their choice.  (3 Positioners have been cut and in the demo: 1:36-2:06) 
> Jingles (The longest ident is included in the demo: 2:06-2:23).

Throughout the week, we broadcasted from the Forum Street, Newman A, Alumni Auditorium and Lemon Grove (Pippa Langstrom + Lemmy Stage). Production-wise, we used different setups for each OB, including a high-quality ShoutCast link for our daytime OB, a low-latency Skype link for our Debates, and 2 Skype links for the Results Show (one from Pippa Langstrom for Ben & Amelia, another from the side of the stage for Hazel).

We’ve also made a highlights package of the debates (3:09–3:31), which was played at the start of the results show on Friday. 

This year, the elections was multiplatform in the sense that we had a much greater presence online, with our Guild Election Mini-site (http://www.xpressionfm.info/exetervote) where visitors can find out about our coverage, listen and share all our interviews with the candidates or listen back to the debates and results night (these were put on Mixcloud/Rewind straight after broadcast). 

* With thanks to: Alex Manning, Ali Gill, Olivia Luder, Sophie Bartlett, Helena Gerrelli, Kseniya Chaika, Lauren Churchman, Tyler Elliot, Chloe Parkin, Ben Kaye and our Voice Talents: Gareth Jones, Lindsey Harris, Natalie Garces-Bovett, Ben Warden, Jack Franklin, Freya Godfrey, Cain Prince, Matthew Bate. **

** There was an uncredited voice that featured in the main promo - to the best of my knowledge, I never got his name, and I can only say sorry to the poor soul who's going unacknowledged. He's the one who said "we'll be live and outside the studio all week long". If anyone knows who that is/if it's you (I remember the face, so I'll check!) I will put your name in ASAP once I get it...

Xmedia Entry: Production for Guild Election Week 2013

Alumni of Exeter University (BA Accounting & Finance Class of 2013)

Former Head of Production (2012-2013) at Xpression FM. Used to produce the Saturday Sports Show, Exeter Sports Show, Guild Election Coverage (Outdoor Broadcast, Debate Show, Results Show), and loads of other things.

Big fan of Dance music and awesome mixes.

Originally from Indonesia, grew up in Singapore, lived in Brighton, then Exeter, then London. Now back home in Jakarta. Has a mixed & confused accent.

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