Representatives

TIMECODE NAME Dialogue 00.00.01 ROXY Before we start this episode, we’d like to know your thoughts and what you think about the BBC Academy podcast. Just head to edrsurvey.com/bbcsurvey to let us know and don’t worry; it’ll only take a few minutes for you and will be very valuable to us. You can find the link in our show notes. Thank you. MUSIC 00.00.20 NARRATOR This is the BBC Academy Podcast, essential listening for the production, journalism and technology broadcast communities, your guide to everything from craft skills to taking your next step in the industry. 00.00.33 ROXY Hello and welcome to this week’s BBC Academy Podcast with me, Roxy Ibrahim Khan. Today I’m really excited because we’re going behind the scenes of the Radio One Breakfast show, with Nick Grimshaw and his production team, it’s one of the most listened to breakfast programmes with an audience of more than nearly five million listeners a week. 00.00.52 ROXY We’ll be finding out what goes into the making of the show, who is responsible for what on air and in the prepping stages, and also, how to build the dynamics of the team. I’m pleased to welcome the programmes Producer, Will Foster, hi Will. WILL Hello. ROXY Assistant Producer, Fiona Hanlan, Hey Fiona. 00.01.08 FIONA Hello. ROXY And Grimmy himself, hiya. NICK Hi. 00.01.12 ROXY Welcome everyone, so it’s just gone half ten and you’ve just come off air how are you usually feeling after a show, buzzing or knackered? 00.01.20 NICK Erm it, it depends really erm we had a lot going on, on the show today, we were doing a big erm competition for Radio One’s Big Weekend, so we had that on, we had Sean Mendes on as well, we had erm like a musical feature that we do called Throwback Thursday and we had a film expert come into see us, Ali Blum, so it was quite a crazy, full on show, and I just feel like I need to like have a fresh bit of air or a shower or something, okay, I feel like it’s quite a weird time yes. 00.01.50 FIONA Yes because we’re up so early our food eating, sleeping patterns all out of sync. So I just want to sit at my desk, put my headphones on, try and avoid people and then about 11 o’clock I’m like, I’m ready to talk. WILL You’ve also had a lot of your working day by the time that most people start their working day [yeah]. So I think it is a slightly strange space to be in. ROXY So what’s the routine then when you guys come in, do you go through a script, is there a script Will? 00.02.14 WILL Well my alarm goes off at 4 o’clock in the morning and I’m in work for 5 o’clock and we normally leave the office largely knowing www.bbc.co.uk/academy 1 what’s going to be in the show the next day, so whether that’s guests or a competition or things that we’re going to talk about, but it’s really nice as well to have room in a show so that you can be as current and topical as possible, so those first few hours of the day will be looking through what’s happened and trying our best to reflect it really. The script itself, it’s not scripted in the sense of how you might read a book or something like that with every single sentence written out, but there will be a structure in place sort of breaking down each half hour into maybe ten minute chunks. ROXY But it’s flexible? 00.02.55 WILL Yes. FIONA Yes, and it’s good to be flexible because if anything amazing happens as Will says, you want to talk about it and people want to listen to the breakfast show because they want to hear how we’re going to discuss it. 00.03.05 NICK Yes, so it’s good, it’s weird the night before if you’ve not got anything planned, like Will said it’s always good to have an idea of what is going to happen the next day on the show, because I think you like rest easy knowing we’ve got like these five things that we’re going to do and then when you get in we figure out where they’re going to be and what time they’re going to happen and how long we’re going to spend on each one, but it’s always good knowing you’ve got stuff to talk about and we’ll have a little sheet of, i don’t know the naked Justin Bieber Instagram or that giraffe that’s had a baby, we’ll have a little list of stuff to talk about and then you can just pick when you want to do it, when it makes sense when you’re on air. 00.03.37 FIONA Will has a word for this, Will calls it hot food. WILL So we’ll always have the main show sort of sketched out of what we’re going to do but then on a separate piece of paper I have a list of hot food [laugh] and the idea of that sort of like stuff that you keep under the lights, so like you know when you go to a canteen [oh yeah] and there’s always stuff ready to go and you just dive in and have a sausage or something. And so its stuff which isn’t necessarily the best stuff but it will get you through. NICK It’s still tasty. WILL Yes. FIONA Still tasty. ROXY Still yummy. How do you guys put your script together, do you guys have regular creative sessions, how do you come up with features for example, Nick? 00.04.12 NICK Because it’s daily there’s always so much stuff going on so it changes really, like it depends who the guest is or what the competition is or it depends what it is, we don’t have like a set we’ll sit down every day at eleven and go through, or I don’t, you probably do. FIONA Well it depends who’s coming in. 00.04.30 WILL It depends who it is. 00.04.30 FIONA Yes like for next week we’ve got some really big guests coming in, www.bbc.co.uk/academy 2 we’re all going to meet as a team [yes] and then go through the ideas and potential like fun features and what we’re going to feel and what we’re say and last minute we get a lot of big interviews, so somebody might say and go, right, you’ve got ~Harry Styles coming in, quick, and you’re like right okay let’s just drop everything and get this sorted. 00.04.50 WILL I think there’s a feeling as well that we’re really lucky that we have all of these massive guests who come on the show and we just want to make sure that with the time we have with them we ask the best questions and do the most entertaining things, because you don’t want to waste those opportunities and so the planning we do do is making sure that if you’re asking ten questions those are the best ten questions you can ask. 00.05.11 And similarly if it’s going to be something which is silly or fun or a game or whatever it might be, that that’s something which feels right to do with that person. ROXY Will as a Producer what kind of practical support are you looking for, what would you look for from Fiona for example? 00.05.25 WILL Show teams I think are really weird, dysfunctional, intimate families and its odd actually because you’re in this really small space, I think in my head when I listen to Radio One and the Breakfast Show, growing up, I imagined it was going to be this sort of massive, glamorous studio [yeah] and it would just be really plush and actually you go into it and it is just a square room that’s quite small and you’re all sat very closely. 00.05.29 WILL And so I think the most important thing is that you all get on, but also understand each other and what each person needs in that space. I think if you’re producing a show you’re just all, you’re thinking ahead in every possible way, so you’re thinking to the end of the show in three and a half hours time when we go on air, but also what you’re going to be doing in the next link, so after thirty three and a half minutes of a song. 00.06.10 WILL And its making sure that when you go into that link, that we’re the most prepared possible, so that might be do we have a caller that we want to speak to, if we do there’s a team assistant who sits outside the studio and does so much stuff, but one of the things it includes is putting callers on to the radio and they’ll chat to them, but then it’ll be always good, because you’ve got millions of listeners you obviously want to make sure they sound as good as possible and they know exactly what they’re doing, so Fiona would quite likely chat to them as well, after that initial vetting process.

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