The BBC saga- Episode 1: The tour

So instead of waking up at 9am on a Tuesday for my usual 3 hour lecture Sue decided to shake it up and send us off four sessions at the BBC on a Wednesday for more respectable 11am.

Our first lecture, well actually not a lecture and look into the life of BBC Lincolnshire. So here's what we learnt. We found out the target audience is roughly 50 years old and it's a mainly speech based station, something we found out on our tour when we walked in on the Melvyn Prior show in which he was using a radio suitable voice to charm listeners as he discussed the top topic of the day which was fuel prices.

So to begin with we were introduced to station manager Charlie Patridge, a lovely man who seemed proud of his successful radio station. He took for a tour around the station and we found out it used to be an old cinema which explained some of unusual architecture. He showed us the main radio studios mixing desks and pointed out that the old school tapes and 70 styles computers had just simply been built over for the new hip flashy equipment, which we actually found out was fresh from 1985 but no system had yet to outclass it.

We found out another thing to, radio stations aren't just for radio. In a small hidden away room with a camera just in case anyone from the local area is going to be on BBC news and needs a live link up. We also found upstairs in the bustling but calm as a clam news room two dedicated techies working on the Internet site. The news team seemed pretty together and had everything ready for the upcoming 12 o'clock bulletin and was giving themselves a pat on the back for what sounded like another high quality bulletin.

Back downstairs we found the batmobile of radio. A highly visible BBC radio car taken out on local events to help the BBC get around and make the county realise the BBC wasn't just a channel, (we'll skip over the mysterious dent we found).

So what I found out from this was simple. This wasn't a relaxed community radio station, it was serious, from the two producers trying desperately to get an interview for Melvyns shows and to the journalist who had to be in for 5am to do her shift. My view of local radio has gone up and has seriously impressed me.