Adventures in Science on BBC Radio 7

I seem to remember hearing this before – and the beginning of the memory ep makes me criiiiiinge – but the techniques and sound design are interesting. Still on that ep, but liking it so far.

Chatting to real people about radio

Was at an election night party last night, and had the good fortune to meet a former New York resident who, like me, streams WNYC to Brussels at any chance!

She did say she prefers WBEZ cos of This American Life, but that said, she knew Radio Lab, from listening to WNYC on the radio.

That was rather a thrill for me! But thankfully, it didn't turn out to be the highlight of the night -- good on ya, people of America!

Coining a phrase.

This interminible wait has left me unable to think of anything intellectual to post.
I know good times are just around the corner, but why can't it just happen now?

The tension is getting to me.

Come on!

Just release the new series of Radio Lab already!

To while away the lonely nights, I've been making up phrases to describe our beloved.

Is it a Krulamradio show, in the Krulumradish tradition?

Okay that's all.

Psst…!

Teehee… just for fun, I typed in this url: www.new.prx.org… well how about that!

Radio Multikulti to shut :(

I admit I haven't listen to Radio Multikulti much recently, but it was always on the radar – and its travel programming and weighting towards German language made it a good model for multi-cultural radio stations in Europe.

Or so I thought.

It's closing down.

Bugger. Haven't read all of this article yet but must, and must find out a bit more.

Acting in Features

Just realised something while listening to RTÉ's recent Secrets and Lies. The narrator is being acted – she's not the producer, not a presenter, but an actor.

That brought to mind the Archive Hour on the Radio Ballads – which I only got to hear recently, on ABC's Radio Eye. It told of a time when the words of the common man were transcribed and delivered on radio (the BBC, at least), by actors. They performed regional roles as necessary, in a more understandable form.

Which reminded me of… Radio Lab! Few programmes out there use so many actors (if you lump singers in there too). And few programmes write around tape so much, having the presenters tell you what the interviewee said (but probably in a more log-winded, scientist way). Both of these are part of what makes Radio Lab the show that is defining a generation of radio.

True enough, some people do fear that they are losing the truth of what is being said, while some snobbish, less patient people hate the idea of sound effects and stories being acted. Radio Lab have responded well to that, by putting an entire uncut interview online, as well as allowing interviewees say what they thought of how the final show went out.

Some people complain about Radio Lab's moving away from "journalistic values" – as if it isn't a feature programme to begin with, and as if radio is good only for music, gabbing, and news – but see? The use of actors on Radio Lab is informed by the decades of strong journalistic tradition, from the second world war and from the start of NPR.

Hmmm. Now just maybe I'm pining for the new series of Radio Lab ;)

Saltcast is great.

Fairly simple point today: Saltcast is great.

An insight into what is clearly a very high standard documentary training course, an insight into making faaaab radio items, and said faaaab radio items. Fab!

Two people kinda want Robert Krulwich to be Science Advisor to the next US president

We all know that few people can explain science like Robert Krulwich can.

So I've started a Facebook group calling on the next US president to make Robert Krulwich his Sciece Advisor.

And after three days, one person has joined.

How crap is that! My take on it is: We want to keep him for ourselves, and not take him off the radio, so no one is joining in.

That's it!

Where are we headed?

An ambitious title, Where are we headed?, and as you suspected, this won't be a comprehensive answer. The setting is clear enough: incentive-less digital broadcasting, iPods, mobile phones, and the internet on the tech side, and probable decreased consumer and funder spending.

Plus, it would seem, me writing veeeeery long sentences when I could be asleep. But how and ever.

The big feature shows seem to be dying off. RTÉ canned Curious Ear this spring, despite the international recognition it got. I think the producer, Ronan Kelly, is now doing stuff for their digital station RTÉ Choice, which is fab news. I'm not up to speed with the funding for their digital services – it was always a bit hazy to be to be honest – so I don't know how secure that is. I want it to be secure, that much I know.

And now there's the big news from Australia: the ABC is ditching its best shows, Street Stories and Radio Eye.

I don't know any of the background, but that really is bad news. The paid outlets for creative features are going, going…

Do we have to look to the USA? It would seem so – and PRX have been doing a sterling job of late, bringing us the joy of the Saltcast and Youthcast, as well as a new PRX due soon.

I would love (as ever) to have been at the Third Coast Festival in Chicago last week, but do I have the money? Like hell I do. But I wonder what was the murmur there about the economy.

Oh and this week I had my first experience of a public radio fund drive – listening online to WNYC, it's was rather cool, though timezones and lack of internet access at home meant I only heard Takeaway/ME - Brian Lehrer. Of course I would have loved to have heard Radio Lab funders, maybe like the ones on PRX or whatever.

All that ramble (man, I need a sub), is a prelude to the Where are we headed? bit. Shows like Radio Eye, the hour-long sound and emotion rich feature, are made for listening to while sitting down, doing not much other than enjoying the programme.

So, you kinda need a home to get the most out of it (I listen on the hoof, but know the city is distracting and detracting). And these days, it seems, fewer and fewer people have homes, especially in the US.

Doesn't that suggest a benefit for more iPod friendly programmes? I think so.
And what is iPod friendly? Hmmm. Not sure just yet. My first reaction is "back to basics": speech based, no background music or sounds, low dynamic range, short, well written, to the point.

Of course you can have background sounds, to play "for the fifth listen", but if it's so simple, will people want to listen again anyway? Lot's of opportunities there I think, that's for sure!

Will ponder and post more later, but right now, I've got to find some wi-fi to steal so I can post this!

Hearing Voices and nature sound. Yay!

H/T from the blog of the super Hearing Voices, here's a point to an article on wildlife sound recording and phonography, with a really cool photo!

DNTO, outside radio

Sometimes, I lose interest in DNTO because Sook-Yin Lee is so un-radio, it seems irrelevant to me, it falls apart.

But she is so un-radio, that she she breaks it out and brings it to new people. She makes me feel like a snob or a jealous child, not wanting radio to be enjoyed by other people who "don't get it".

But that is so important! Especially in these days when the technology is shooting off in all sorts of directions. Radio used to be how music people found their new music, but now that's much less the case. So we're losing the music people (though as an aside, if an economic downturn means people are going to gigs less, the full coverage a radio operation can muster of live shows can drag us up a bit – but that's an aside). Sook-Yin Lee is a music person, a wider-world person who happens to be using radio. I've been listening to the podcast for about a year now, before being convinced. But joining up with the new theme music, and (cos this is where the technology and life are making eye-contact) the video on the website, I'm a convert.

Well, I'm still myself of course. Just seeing new ways of making the would audible.

Here's the first video:

The Journey to Away, the Best of Outfront podcast, CBC radio, week of October 1st 2008. 

This is an exemplary use of music and sound – no, the Asian gong is not a patronising or flat tool. Hear how it punctuates the speech, and how it ramps up the significance of words – what could be "just words".

I suspect in parts of Canada, this story may seem old, common, ordinary. There is something out of the ordinary and uncommon at the end, but how to bring in those listeners who may discount the story as "just another one of those"? With evocative sounds, sound that remind listeners why they have heard a story like this before, how the difference between Vietnamese food here and there is something they know, a part of their social definitions.

The gong, like the school children and waves, sounds like field audio. The sounds of war are also so real, that they do a lot of explaining.

On the second listen, I'm more struck with the return journey to away. The sign of a great piece, I think, if it can absorb you yet still leave more to discover on the second listen. That might break one of the traditional rules of radio, but that's always been a news-based rule, and this is, after all, the age of podcasting.

Outfront is one of those amazing shows that made me want to go to Canada and work in the CBC. That's not to say there isn't still a chance of course…

Diary of Leanne Wolf wins at Third Coast

An outstanding RTÉ Radio One documentary has won an award at the Third Coast Festival.

The Diary of Leanne Wolfe is superb. It's gut-wrenching, and it's tough to listen to only because it's so sad.

It has been honoured by Third Coast. I am very pleased at this. Making a radio piece is a way of honouring a story, and radio makers recognising a particular piece is honouring it further. I suspect a tremendous radio documentary means something small to Leanne Wolfe's family. That piece winning a Richard H. Driehaus Foundation award half way across the world can, hopefully, also mean something to her parents and sister.

I was bullied in school, but this documentary helped wipe that experience from my past. It's wonderful.

This week:

On Sunday, the batteries that came with my Olympus LS-10 finally gave up the ghost. I bought it in late June, and recorded about three hours of audio, but had also used it as my regular mp3 player almost all the time since then too. Awesome battery life.

Changing tack, an interesting post (they all are, but this one is more of a sharer, I guess) on James Cridland's blog about personality radio.

Flickr, CNN, and Christopher Lydon

I've started an internship – no comments about denying my age, please – outside radio. Chatted with the media analyst there the other day, and somehow we got talking about France24. And he told me of a time he was interviewed there during a bulletin and got all tongue tied: he couldn't concentrate because the presenter was so pretty.

Ok we probably got talking about that because Mishal Husain was presenting on BBC World News just then on the TV set above his head.

Still, I didn't know it at the time, but my new colleague had just given me an opening to a blog post I've been considering for a few weeks now.

A lot of people – mostly male, I'm thinking – watch more TV news because the person on screen looks good. Ok maybe I do it too, and maybe even with radio presenters, but thank heavens there's no website that holds onto things like blog posts you once wrote then deleted in a blush.

Since I paid up for a Flickr Pro account, I've been able to see which is my most visited photo. The search-engine grabbing tit shots perhaps? How about a shag from above? My collection of antenna masts in New Zealand? Amazingly not.

It's this one:


A photo of me in studio, or is it a photo of CNN International anchor Kristie Lu Stout somewhere outside the usual set? Flickr also kindly tells me the referring site, and it is a forum thread on CNNfan.org simply called… Kristie Lu Stout:

Wendy Mok took the picture, I think with Rik O'Shea's camera (yeah I'm still a name-dropper!). The photo data is wrong though, it was taken in late-summer 2004.

So right. Does it make people follow the news more? It does with some, yes. How does it change the authority of a newsreader – either by increasing or decreasing it?

CNN rarely employes unattractive presenters (okay they have that odd western aesthetic with Asian women. Fine), and if your favourite correspondent gets sent to a different bureau or beat, she'll bring your interest with her. Anyway. I'm not going to get intellectual about this because I'm not sufficiently equipped.

To me, for now, yes I reckon it's rather immature.

Back Home

What about radio? Painting your own pictures… how much better is that!

There's a discussion thread about that over at The Sound of Young America (no, I don't understand the branding. Maybe young Americans are very ironic. Many of those I've met are super-well informed and pleasent. I'm stumped by the cheesiness thing though). Anyway, as well as the wholly deserved adoration of Jad Abumrad (can't wait for the new season of Radio Lab, eeee!), and the delightful description of him as "adorkable", there is something I had only the vaguest sense of. That Christopher Lydon. All I know of his work is the Open Source podcast , with The Watson Institute at Brown University, An American conversation with… etc. Okay I thought, he's an academic who's doing a podcast as part of the course. Good on him.

Ah ignorance.

How surprised was I to find on that forum that there's a song about falling in love with Christopher Lydon! And in that song, the heart-broken Dresden Doll sings she won't contribute to NPR… naturally I have educated myself, slightly, about Christopher Lydon's career, though I have a way to go yet on that.

So how about this: Christopher Lydon interviewed the Dresden Dolls!

Musicans write and sing songs, radio producers get ideas of who to interview, and presenters make the sounds that reach us – the touch at a distance.

And in case you don't know it, here is surely one of the greatest break-up songs in the history of fantasy and broadcasting: stream.publicbroadcasting.net/ros/open_source_051005_lydon.mp3

Orientalism, China, radio.

I've just been listening to Studio 360's piece on the poetry of Mao Zedong. Raised some thoughts.

It started in the menu, where they played a clip of a Mao poem being read in English – by what sounded like a Chinese student. I guess I was pre-disposed to question the piece after it flagged itself as representing Mao with a young, weak voice.

The piece itself followed an item on how tyrants (their term), including Mao, ease themselves into the psyche through graphic and architectural art.

The first interviewee was an American expert on Mao – Willis Barnstone. I'd never heard of him so I was immediately interested in what he had to say. I was happy with that, and happy to hear a new voice on modern Chinese history, even if it's one of which I have no contextual knowledge – a glance at his bio is well-impressive.

The next guest, though made me feel less comfortable, when she said Yan'an as if it rhymed with Yemen. I reverted to the old habit of doubting the authority of someone who pronounces the names wrong (a habit that was only slightly softened by how most Chinese Olympians were given names with "jeee" in them for much of August on British TV). It led me to question why both their specialists were Westerners. But with a bit of thought: if I were working on a US radio piece about modern Chines poetry, who would be my first port of call? Prof Heather Inwood at Ohio State University. Though at least I could be sure she'd get the pronunciation right.

The arguments for using a westerner could include how clearly the person will speak English. You have to balance that with the practicality of taking who you can get. That said, for a timeless arts piece, you have little excuse for not getting the best person who will speak to you. And then, perhaps the most significant point: the piece was re-versioned from a podcast. As a podcaster myself, I think that's freaking awesome! But, should that be enough to excuse some weaknesses?

It's maybe a bit harsh of me to say weaknesses. As an independent, producing for little or no money, arranging quality interviews is very tough – sometimes even a TBU is out of the question, and Skype is your only way of getting an interview. While I feel radio has to move away from phone audio where possible to strengthen itself in the age of diverse digital media, I also accept that there are practical difficulties for the individual.

Back to the point of using Western experts. If you're an expert, you're an expert. So it shouldn't matter where you grew up. Where you grew up may mean your starting point is closer to that of the listener – so that would be an example of an American academic being better for Studio 360 than a PRC academic, for example.

Helping a listener see the PRC understanding may be very valuable, and may be very difficult – a level of difficulty that Radio Lab could take on, better than most, although it can be far less comfortable to talk about another race or culture than about science.

But you know, I could have been being sexist or agest too as the speaker was young and female. I'm not sure I'm equipped to examine that.

Now back to the young weak voice – indeed, Mao wrote poetry in his youth, and it is possibly a good challenge to our presuppositions to have him portrayed by an early-20s Chinese student in the US. That's likely a fair comparison to who Mao was in his day.

So this has become more of an analysis, than a criticism: and I would hate to think the producers would be in any way put off by some guy writing stuff on his blog.

And a final note, I don't actually know who read the poetry, how old he is or any of that. Though I know they could have gotten someone pretty good at London Chinese Radio ;-)

UPDATE, Sunday 5 October: With a bit more distance, I've been struck by the obvious point that this story comes from a poetry background, while I was hearing it from a Sinology background. If you work on a poetry podcast, and poetry is you field, of course you will find most of your experts from that field. And that's media – it gets heard by people in all sort of different fields. And to be fair, I was listening to an arts programme, not a history or, um, China Studies programme.

In Brief: Merchandising

Radio 4's Today programme had presenter-head eggcups; NPR allows loyal listeners even more unashamedly celebrate their passion:




It's a tote – which I guess is a more American term for a shopper, or shopping bag, or canvas bag, or cloth bag, or… oh just look at the picture. It's one of those, punning on the name of their Legal Affairs correspondant Nina Totenberg.

Simple pleasures :)

If I had a million dollars (or two thousand pounds)

Wildeye Bulletin

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First of all, news of an exciting new trip for 2009. As with all things with Chris Watson we expect places to go fast - so do let us know asap if you'd like to book a place...

Wildlife Sound Recording in Northern India with Chris Watson

A unique opportunity to record the rich sounds of the jungles of Northern India accompanied by experienced wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson.

Our base will be Camp Forktail Creek - a forest home surrounded by a dense Sal forest and moist jungles and the only ‘jungle’ camp of its kind within Corbett Tiger Reserve, offering exclusivity in game viewing, great walks and explorations on foot. Corbett National Park was the first National Park founded in Asia and being an excellent habitat for the Bengal Tiger, “Project Tiger” was launched here in 1973. Corbett is also rich in avifauna with counts of over 600 bird species.

From Camp you could get great sound recordings of Great Hornbill, Slaty Woodpecker, Oriental Scops Owl, Spot bellied Eagle Owl, Brown Hawk Owl, Large Tailed Nightjar, Indian Cuckoo, Common Hawk Cuckoo, Cheetal, Barking deer and monkey alarm calls and if lucky a leopard sawing.

As can be seen at http://www.wildeye.co.uk/india.html, we have a fantastic itinerary planned with walks, game drives into various parts of the park, night expeditons, and, with luck, elephant-back safaris. Although the focus will be on recording wildlife and natural atmospheres there will also be opportunities to record the wonderful sounds of the people and villages of the area. As April is wedding time in the area we may get lucky with a wedding in the village or a prayer ceremony in a local temple.

Dates: Sun 29th March - Wed 8th April 2009

Costs: £1,990 per person. Includes international flights, all local travel in India, accommodation and full board (apart from expenses of personal nature like phone calls, postage, laundry, tips, alcoholic beverages)

Booking: To check availability contact: info@wildeye.co.uk
If places are available you will be asked to pay a deposit of £500 per person to secure your booking.
Places are strictly limited so early booking is recommended.

Wildlife sound recording with Chris Watson

I have had the pleasure of attending two workshops run by Chris Watson – one of the most respected natural-sound recordists around, and the choice of the BBC. He was also an avant garde musician of the 70s and 80s. And, he's lovely!

The first workshop was organised by the Museum of Garden History in Lambeth (well done Chris Potts), and the second was by the Wildlife section of the British Library Sound Archive (well done Cheryl Tipp).

So a lot of like-minded people met and talked and listened and learned and felt warm and fuzzy.

We all learned a lot of techniques and skills from Chris. The biggest benefit for me was the encouragement that you are free and perfectly entitled to go out, get gear, drive and walk out to a hide and record, edit, compose, and perform. You can do it all. There's no need to fear you aren't as microphone-minded as some, no need to fear the editing, no need to think you don't deserve a podcast or a public exhibition.

I've increased my podcast output a lot since the workshops, and that can only be good!

London Calling

Watcha!

Back again, this time from good old London town. As ever I'll make my excuses and promise a longer post soon – in this case on a fab natural sound recording workshop with the one and only Chris Watson.

In the meantime, some bits and bobs: 

• Virgin Radio is still IDing as Virgin Radio.
• There are new carpets in the centre block of Bush House
• London Chinese Radio has a studio on Camberwell Road, and will be web-streaming live from next week
• Maplin doesn't (seem to) sell skinny mic cable.