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BIRSt - Bournemouth Internet Radio Station

Best Student Radio Station Entry 2010

Introduction

BIRSt recognises that it doesn‟t traditionally fit to the conventional mould of a student

station. BIRSt has always programmed speech content for a student audience, but we do

not want to be exclusive to this and ensure all our content also appeals to a wider

demographic. However despite this difference in programming, this year has seen some

of the station‟s biggest achievements since conception and all of which coinciding with its

ten year anniversary.

The accompanying audio submission not only highlights the diverse breadth of

programming we try and offer but also the range of presenting, writing and producing

skills we have been lucky to have in such a small team this year. All of whom contributing

to pushing the station to a new place, laying down foundations for future teams to take it

even further.

A year of countless firsts for the station, collaborations, press attention, milestones & more

importantly hard work induced fun! As a result of the transformation and achievements

the station has made of this year, we want to share this by putting it forward as Station

of the Year to reflect the effort and commitment the team have shown.

Aims & Objectives

Continue to produce innovative, engaging and entertaining speech based radio

Devise BIRSt‟s first music policy, with the acquisition of its first music licence.

Incorporating specialist music programming alongside the use of music within speech

based genres, whilst differentiating itself from how other student stations use music.

Re-launch the BIRSt brand in line with the 10-year anniversary to maintain its

programming and image as relevant to the current audience

Increase the awareness of BIRSt as a speech based student station as well as

advertising the content it produces

Increase both the audience and average listening time of people tuning into BIRSt

Celebrate the station‟s 10-year anniversary by integrating the theme

into its programming

Increase the level of live productions, and use of a live audience in pre-

recorded & live content



The Team

10th Anniversary Re-launch

With a new BIRSt team every year, it means that everyone had to get to grips with running and

producing for the station very quickly. All of the BIRSt team are also studying for their MA in Radio

Production at Bournemouth, and the running the station is done above and beyond their academic studies.

However the unique factor with BIRSt is that it is always run with a comparatively small team to other

student stations. This year is no exception with a group of 13, however this didn‟t stop the station from

making some of its best achievements since its launch ten years ago.

This year more than any there was a clear breadth of individual strengths, and we shaped the team to

make best use of these for the station. With 7 genres of programming, we could put in specialists for each

to look after the output as well as the strong station management team looking after BIRSt‟s operations.

This year was a very special one for BIRSt, celebrating both the 10th year

anniversary for the station and 10 years of MA Radio Production at Bournemouth

University. BIRSt was re-launched on the 8th February 2010 with a new look, logo

and station sound, all unveiled in a re-launch ceremony. With the official opening

being conducted with Phill Jupitus “cutting the ribbon” (or master session magnetic

tape in our case!) after an audio “launch sequence” was played signifying the

broadcast of the first programmes on the station. An extract of which is included in

our audio submission

Programming this year in the schedule also included a '10 year' theme, such as

short programmes featuring alumni talking about their experiences with the

station, a 10 year sports review and 10 year music retrospective. In addition a

number of idents were themed, highlighting to the listener that BIRSt was in its 10th

year.

This year BIRSt also acquired a music licence, more of which will be

mentioned later, allowing the station to give the listener a wider choice of

programming and also stretch the team in their creativity and explore

new genres of radio.



Website

To mark the tenth anniversary of BIRSt, a brand new area of the website was

introduced, in which listeners could access content from the past years of the

station. In the archive, not only were copies of every programme available,

but also past team‟s profile pages. This served as a great way of showing

how far BIRSt has come over the last 10 years, as well as giving information

on content they were making, it provides a long term „listen-again‟ function for

any broadcasts made by BIRSt.

As well as the BIRSt brand image being re-launched this year, this

was the first time the website hosting the station had a complete

overhaul. From the audience‟s perspective the website had a very

different look, and the way in which programmes are accessed have

been vastly improved.

One of the biggest breakthroughs this year was the way in which the team were able to upload

content onto the website. Each member of the team had their own login which was accessible

anywhere in the country or world, allowing for outside recordings to be edited and uploaded

remotely, (some of our programs being uploaded as far away as China!). It meant that new

programmes are available to listeners much quicker after production, maintaining the immediacy that

radio brings.

The layout of the website this year is vastly different to previous editions. In

terms of presentation, it is now far more user friendly than previous years,

with clear genres at top of the homepage, complete with colourful graphics.

When someone uploads new content, it is also automatically put onto their

own page, so if you like a particular broadcast you can listen to their other

work. Each member‟s page is complete with picture and biography to give

information on the presenting and production they have done. In addition the

„BIRSt‟s Latest‟ page highlights all new content to the site and can be connected to RSS feed to have

these notifications sent directly to the listener.

With all streamed audio, users can either listen on the page, or can decide to listen

in a pop-up. Allowing people to listen to any content either standalone, or as a

secondary activity if they wish to browse elsewhere.

Maintaining BIRSt‟s „on demand‟ programming strategy, it also meant it was a perfect platform to

produce podcasts for the site. Particular shows, and best bit complications, can be highlighted by the

team as Podcasts and as a result will be available to automatically download via BIRSt‟s iTunes

channel. Where listeners can also choose to subscribe to all available content as it becomes available.



This year BIRSt didn‟t just work independently, and saw a time where it

branched out in building relationships with other stations and parties in

featuring its productions.

In branching out to the local area, Forest FM a community station based in

Verwood offered to feature some of our content that was relevant for their

audience. In addition, BIRSt also guest presented a special collaboration of the

mash-up and remix music show - Ramdom Thoughts.

Outside of the radio medium, the largest online fansite for the television series

Lost picked up BIRSt‟s Lost Lockdown production and asked to feature the

broadcast on their own website every week. Leading to the programme gaining

an international audience who interacted with the show, and it picking up just

under 5 thousand subscribers.

Closer to home however, BIRSt‟s biggest collaboration was with its sister student

station at Bournemouth – Nerve*. Traditionally the two stations had a poor

relationship, and in year of both BIRSt‟s 10 year anniversary and Nerve* re-

launching with new Student Union staff, we decided to bridge the gap and

pave the way for further collaboration in the future. As a result some of the

team assisted with editing pre-recorded shows, advised on compliance and

helped produce shows for their FM broadcasts. This culminated with the biggest

co-production being The Bigger Breakfast Show, involving Phill Jupitus on a

number of the broadcasts.

Collaboration

If the listener does want pre-programmed content, the BIRSt website also has a live

stream available to listeners. For the first time, a full weekly schedule has been

produced in which BIRSt material is streamed every day, more on which is

mentioned later. Users can simply click on the „Listen Live‟ button to listen to an

extremely wide variety of pre-programmed streamed audio or to listen to any of

the BIRSt Live! broadcasts.

Listeners have also been given more options to contact the team. The website has a new „contact us‟

page, which not only goes directly to the station managers, but also has general contact details for

content enquiries or for the Heads of Music. Listeners can also leave comments on each programme

if they wish, which is a brand new (and possibly brave) feature for 2010, but is carefully

moderated for compliant comments. There are also links on the homepage to BIRSt‟s Twitter and

Facebook pages and in addition each programme has functionally to cross connect with listener‟s

profiles on various social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and Digg.

DRAMA – Writer‟s Block (a multi-part audience interactive drama), ASL? (A look at when something isn‟t

quite right at speed dating) & Line One‟s Still Open (A dark psychological drama)

COMEDY – Times Like These (Generational based comedy panel quiz), The Appeal for Help with Math

& Dougal (a very surreal look on what‟s going on around us) & The Unprofessionals (Sketch Show)

FEATURES – Bizarre Bournemouth (A look at the weird attractions of the area), Sir Cecil Beaton at

Home (A look back at the he great 20th Century photographer, designer, diarist and socialite from

those who knew him best) & Lost Lockdown (A podcast covering the TV series lost)

SPORT – David Jensen Interview (Discussing the Radio Industry & Crystal Palace), World Cup Recap

(Discussing the start of the World Cup and forward) & Climbing with Chris (Feature on Rock Climbing)

EXPERIMENTAL – Sound-Lab Symphony in Kitchen (A look at the music you can create from the kitchen

of a Chinese restaurant), Do You Believe in Magic? (An ordinary trip in the car can also make for a

tuneful journey), Sunday Cycle – A Binaural Journey (Exploring what you sometimes miss on your journey

in by bicycle).

INTERNATIONAL – World Cup of Food (A competitive look at the food of the world), Korsang: A

Volunteer in Cambodia (An interview with a volunteer on the Korsang aid project)

All of which that makes up another BIRSt achievement this year, having produced over 100 individual

programmes – the most ever seen by the station, each maintaining the same level of high quality. Some

programmes which have also been featured by other sites, forums & stations.

The unique part about BIRSt is that we offer this content in two ways, primarily for the

listener to choose when they wish to hear it, with all programmes being available on

demand. Deliberately we leave the listener in control of what they want to listen to and

when they want to listen to it. However mindful, that some of the audience want content

pre-programmed for them, for the first year BIRSt has created a streaming schedule

where listeners can tune in over various time slots to hear a selection of different content

in specific genre blocks.

In addition this stream also hosts BIRSt‟s live output during June – where the

station‟s pre recorded programming temporarily suspends to bring you shows live

from the BIRSt studio. This year with live music sessions, a live guide to Morris

Dancing, an interactive drama, introducing what‟s on in the local area along with a

wide variety of other live content in all the genres BIRSt covers.



Content

As a speech based station, content has always been a massive proportion of the workload involved with the

station and more so than ever before with new genres to programme for. BIRSt programmes in 7 areas

(including music which will be mentioned in detail later), but here are some of the highlights of this year‟s

shows many of which are featured on the accompanying audio submission:

DRAMA – Writer‟s Block (a multi-part audience interactive drama), ASL? (A look at when something isn‟t

quite right at speed dating) & Line One‟s Still Open (A dark psychological drama)

COMEDY – Times Like These (Generational based comedy panel quiz), The Appeal for Help with Math &

Dougal (a very surreal look on what‟s going on around us) & The Unprofessionals (Sketch Show)

FEATURES – Bizarre Bournemouth (A look at the weird attractions of the area), Sir Cecil Beaton at Home (A

look back at the he great 20th Century photographer, designer, diarist and socialite from those who knew

him best) & Lost Lockdown (A podcast covering the TV series lost)

SPORT – Interview with David Jensen (Discussing the Radio Industry & Crystal Palace), World Cup Recap

(Looking at the start of the FIFA World Cup and forward) & Climbing with Chris (Feature on Rock Climbing)

EXPERIMENTAL – Sound-Lab Symphony in Kitchen (A look at the music you can create from the kitchen of a

Chinese restaurant), Do You Believe in Magic? (An ordinary trip in the car can also make for a tuneful

journey), Sunday Cycle – A Binaural Journey (Exploring what you sometimes miss on your journey in by

bicycle).

INTERNATIONAL – World Cup of Food (A competitive look at the food of the world), Korsang: A Volunteer

in Cambodia (An interview with a volunteer on the Korsang aid project)

All of which that makes up another BIRSt achievement this year, having produced over 100 individual

programmes – the most ever seen by the station, each maintaining the same level of high quality. Some

programmes which have also been featured by other sites, forums & stations.

The unique part about BIRSt is that we offer this content in two ways, primarily for the listener to choose

when they wish to hear it, with all programmes being available on demand. Deliberately we leave the

listener in control of what they want to listen to and when they want to listen to it. However mindful, that

some of the audience want content pre-programmed for them, for the first year BIRSt has created a

streaming schedule where listeners can tune in over various time slots to hear a selection of different content

in specific genre blocks.

In addition this stream also hosts BIRSt‟s live output during June – where the station‟s pre recorded

programming temporarily suspends to bring you shows live from the BIRSt studio. This year with live music

sessions, a live guide to Morris Dancing, an interactive drama, introducing what‟s on in the local area along

with a wide variety of other live content in all the genres BIRSt covers.

Our music programming is incredibly diverse, including music based documentaries (We are

the Robots: The Voyage of the Vocoder), interviews with musicians and promoters (Henrie‟s

Music Show and BIRSt Live!) and showcases of local talent (BIRSt New Music: Matt Marr).

For the live sessions and interviews we focus mainly on the Bournemouth & Poole music scene,

an area that often gets missed by bigger stations. We also covered the Wimborne Folk

Festival and took a multi-track outside recording unit to capture a selection of the live sets.

These were then mixed in post-production and put out as part of the festival coverage.

The Shuffles were a series of programmes where one person had to push the random button on their

portable audio player to play out on the station and tell the listener what that song means to them. We‟ve

featured Tim Wheeler from Ash (who had Beethoven bizarrely enough), Ian Brodie from the Lightening

Seeds, Miles Hunt from the Wonderstuff and loads more. Some of which, with a carefully compliant eye,

even took place live!

The wide range of music output reflects the vast tastes of the team and where possible

both local and international acts are covered. Through which some of our music

documentaries are produced. Documentaries on subjects including Nirvana & Introducing

Endtroducing; a show about the first ever album only made up of samples, DJ Shadow‟s

Endtroducing and the band who exist to play it using only instruments.

But in addition to all this, we didn‟t want to miss out on bringing live music to our studios. Despite our studios

being primarily designed for speech based broadcast, we had to adapt what we had with extra mixers

and array of re-cabling to bring our music programming to our live audience - another first for BIRSt!

Our music programming is incredibly diverse, including music based documentaries (We are

the Robots: The Voyage of the Vocoder), live sessions from local acts, interviews with

musicians and promoters (Henrie‟s Music Show and BIRSt Live!) and showcases of local talent

(BIRSt New Music: Matt Marr).

For the live sessions and interviews we focus mainly on the Bournemouth & Poole music scene, an area that

often gets missed by bigger stations. We also covered the Wimborne Folk Festival and took a multi-track

outside recording unit to capture a selection of the live sets. These were then mixed in post-production and

put out as part of the festival coverage.



Music

It is the first time that BIRSt, in its ten years of bringing solely speech programming to the

airwaves, has had its own music licence. So in shaping our music policy, for this and future

years output, we wanted to ensure we do something very special with it. BIRSt deliberately has no playlist;

instead music is specifically chosen to either enhance speech based programming or to innovatively create

specialist music programmes focusing closely on either a music genre or artist. As BIRSt is co-located with a

sister student station Nerve*, whose output is music driven, we wanted to ensure that BIRSt‟s output was not

overlapping, and instead music is used to emphasise the speech output, as if it‟s another character.



Audience & Publicity

As well as traditional forms of advertising, such as flyers and posters, we also

wanted to ensure social networking media was a major part of this approach.

Although the station had dipped its toe into this previously, this year we wanted to

make it a fully functional part of the station‟s operations. BIRSt‟s Facebook page not

only kept regular contact with listeners over station news and events, but also posted

out notifications of new programmes and content available on a weekly basis, seeing

its highest ever membership and page viewing on this platform. In addition many of

the main BIRSt shows had their own Facebook fanpages, where listeners could

comment and contribute to the show directly. Also for the first year, BIRSt established

a presence on Twitter not only to update followers on content as it is available &

publicise events but also to allow the audience to interact in a quick an easy way. Both social media

platforms, we ensured carried the same tone and branding as BIRSt‟s site to ensure consistency and

recognition for the audience.

We also wanted to make sure BIRSt had a presence on iTunes, making content

available for download on its own channel. This also allowed listeners to subscribe

so any new content could be downloaded automatically to their playlist. Outside

of this BIRSt also has its own YouTube channel to post visual content to support

broadcast programmes, whether it behind the scenes footage, or promotional

video material. In addition BIRST reached out onto a further platform this year for

the first time, but also being able to be received on WiFi radios.

As one of BIRSt‟s main objectives was to increase its audience this year, it was key that we engaged

with listeners in as many appropriate ways as possible. Always a challenge to make the most from

an annual budget of just under £200!

Initially focus was given to the BIRSt brand which although it had represented the

station well over the last 10-years, we felt it now required some changes to make it

relevant to a modern audience. As part of the station re-launch the BIRSt logo was

redesigned, keeping the basics of an exploding waveform, but modernising it to give

it a more innovative and edgy feel – characteristics we wanted to be paralleled in

the station‟s broadcasts. This design and colouration of this logo was then extended

onto all other areas of the station, be it marketing, presenter profiles, the website etc,

to ensure that everything about the station had a uniform feel and anyone unfamiliar

with the station could identify all aspects as BIRSt.



Overall BIRSt has seen a year, where not only has it met its aims but had excelled

in surpassing them, only because a team who have been proud to put the effort in

at every opportunity. Whether it be its level of output, its new music

programming, media attention or its audience breadth, depth & retention, we have tried our upmost

to do the best for the station and present it to you as such.

In this 10th year for the station there has always been an attempt to push the boundaries with a

different kind of student radio. Challenging the existing broadcast format, by allowing the audience

to schedule their own listening with a variety of productions in different genres – some of which new

to the prior output of the station. As a result we hope to have brought BIRSt to a place where it can

continue to flourish as a student station for another 10 years.

Summary

BIRSt has also been proactive in highlighting some of its main events with the press, to generate more

coverage for the station. We have on a couple of occasions where we have been covered by the local

paper – The Bournemouth Echo, most significantly coverage on the station‟s launch. Also some of our

music shows have been featured by bhOne, an online sire showcasing the local music scene. Whilst

nationally the opening of the station was featured in Radio Today, and The Bigger Breakfast project it

co-produced was highlighted as an article in The Times.

ith listeners being recorded in Australia, China, Canada, Spain, US and many others.

(All figures accurate up to and including 15th July 2010)

As well as BIRSt engaging with listeners through the transmitted

programmes, on several occasions it also invited a live audience into

recordings or live broadcasts to experience shows first hand. Comedy panel

show Times Like These was recorded with a live studio audience in

Bournemouth‟s largest lecture theatre, with special editions of co-production

The Bigger Breakfast & BIRSt Live! inviting in an audience to the live events

that were planned and broadcast. Allowing for reactions to be picked up

and conveyed to the audience at home.

Overall this culminated in BIRSt‟s biggest achievement this year – in establishing by a far margin its

highest listener figures. The BIRSt site has registered just over 7,000 unique listeners who have visited

BIRSt accumulatively just under 32,000 times this year, with the peak listeners on any one day hitting

414 people. Our proudest achievements! Also encouragingly 23% of listeners stay with us between 30

minutes & 1 hour and 32% stay over an hour (not including people who visit and leave immediately). Also we

witnessed that our audience spans internationally with listeners being recorded in Australia, China,

Canada, Spain, US and a few others.

(All figures accurate up to and including 15th July 2010)

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