Swan FM

Delivery of the Swan FM Project

The project was delivered in the following ways.

Using Media Studies textbooks I designed a series of activities aiming to familiarise students with the forms and conventions of fm band broadcasts. The students recorded their responses to a number of stations as we listened to the radio in class. They began to identify their likes and dislikes and implicitly to plan what they would like Swanlea’s radio station to sound like.

In September 2004 the class visited the Capital Radio studios in Leicester Square, London. Greg Edwards, a presenter on Capital Gold and a personal contact, made the visit possible. The production staff at Capital hosted the visit. Greg spoke to the students and led a workshop on voice presentation styles.

The visit was divided into three activities

1. A tour of the studios including the sports desk and the weather desk. The students briefly met Noel Gallagher of Oasis, waiting to be interviewed by Xfm, and saw Foxy in the studio presenting his show.
2. A demonstration of how a studio works and individual practice at delivering a link between records and a short news item as if ‘live on air.’ Greg Edwards sat in and advised on presentation styles and voice techniques.
3. An opportunity to script school news items of different lengths with one of the production staff.

The students greatly enjoyed the visit although they found live presentation difficult. They learned that, as a business, the Capital organisation comprises a number of different radio stations with diverse identities working together in the same building. For example in the studio next to the one used by Swanlea students for their practice broadcasts the Disney Channel was being broadcast.

They also learnt a key principle of radio station formatting which I decided to apply throughout the project.

In a non-specialist pop station the aim of the producers is to keep the audience listening until the advertisements are broadcast. Therefore audience members should not be alienated by the repeated playing of music styles they don’t like but instead should be presented with a variety of styles making them feel that, if the current song is not to their taste, the next one or the one afterwards will be. As the producer said ‘You never play the same type of song twice in a row. People just switch off.’ In the context of Capital Gold this refers to variety in songs from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s as well as different styles.

The songs are not selected by the presenter, but in advance by the producer. The producer uses a pie chart to record the different songs and variety of styles to be played in a 60-minute period.

This was a planning principle which some of the group, who had very specific music tastes they wished to share with the rest of the school, took a long time to accept.

We also learnt that it is challenging to script even a 10 second news item and that presenters have a sheet recording the details of each song to help them plan their spoken presentations. This records the length of the song, the length of the musical introduction before the vocals begin and whether the song fades or ends abruptly.

On returning to class the students were excited by the visit and I had in my mind a clearer vision of how we could model Swanlea’s station on the presentation style of Capital Gold.

Looking back over the project it would be difficult to inspire students and plan a school radio station without organising a visit to a local professional station.

I then divided the class into groups and asked them to work on basic planning tasks related to the station. This involved designing a name for the station and a basic idea of the broadcast times and station format. Mr Goodman, pastoral deputy head, came to the class and gave a talk on what the school, as a community would expect from the station and what the boundaries were. The class were asked, in their groups, to plan a presentation to the leadership team outlining how they would meet Mr Goodman’s and the school’s expectations. The plan was that the group presentation would lead to the formal ‘go ahead’ from the school to deliver broadcasts.

The class quickly decided on the name Swan FM for their station and evaluated the suitability of a number of alternative suggestions. Swan FM met three requirements Greg Edwards had explained to us; it is short, memorable and it reflects the community it serves. However he was less sure about a station being named after an animal, even one as graceful as a swan!

The students sketched possible logos and selected an overall design. I had intended to ask the art department to design a professional logo but pressure of time led me to design a logo with the kissing swans being copied from clipart. The students accepted and liked the design.

I recorded Mr Goodman’s key points and based some materials on asking the students to consider how to meet them.

Mr Goodman returned to the class to hear a practice of the presentation while I taught his lesson. His feelings were that some of the students reached a high level of presentation while others had barely made an effort.

This is an issue with working on an activity such as this with a mixed ability class and doing it as a coursework requirement. There were several disaffected students in the class who constantly let their colleagues down and had a minimal input. Swan FM was ‘carried’ by a core of motivated students and projects such as this may work better as voluntary extra-curricular activities.

Mr Goodman felt that it would not be appropriate for the whole group to present to the leadership team as planned and that he would allow the project to proceed on the basis of what he had heard.

In the meantime I had been discussing the technical specifications of the project with Ray Lau, the head of music.

The music department had already bought vinyl and CD DJ decks, a basic mixing board and microphones. The music practice room could be used as a studio. I had discounted ambitious plans to set up an induction loop or a similar technical network to broadcast the programming. Using the tannoy system was out of the question, as it would contravene health and safety regulations. However the amplifier in reception linked to the 4 stereo speakers mounted on the wall of the mall offered a suitable method of broadcasting. Using this system would require running a long ‘jack’ cable from the music practice room to reception. Although the cable is cheap, its safe and secure installation presented challenges.

Finally I decided to ask if the old reception area could be used as the studio and the office staff kindly agreed. This removed the need to run a cable from another area of the school but presented the difficulty of having Swan FM presenters working on their shows in sight of their peers in the mall.

After school one day a group of students and I made a practice broadcast using the equipment and methods I had finally decided to use. We found that the speakers in the mall were hard-mounted to the wall and this led to sound distortion. The speakers should have been mounted on brackets in the first instance and this is a change the school may wish to consider if it wishes to make effective use of the speakers in the future. We had insufficient time to make any changes and would just have to be careful with setting the tone and volume controls on the amplifier to avoid distortion.

While working on the technical specifications I also demonstrated how to use a studio monitor and headphones to avoid feedback and the class practiced setting acceptable sound tolerance levels.

The lessons I learned from the technical planning were;

• To keep the technical specifications as simple as possible
• To give careful consideration to the location of the studio and how its location will relate to the method of broadcasting. My original plan to use the Music Studio was impractical.
• To assume that ‘nothing will work’ and begin planning from that assumption.

The next stage of the process was to plan the programme structure and music policy of Swan FM. I wished to model Swan FM on Capital Gold as closely as possible.

To do this the group planned and I designed an audience survey to be completed by a sample of students from each tutor group. We would then use the survey to design ‘pie charts’ of different music styles suggested by the school community and finally to buy and schedule individual songs reflecting the different styles enjoyed by Swanlea students. The audience survey also asked about spoken word programming, and I decided this would form the second part of our programme planning.

Despite repeated announcements in staff briefing and letters in registers only 20% of tutors asked their classes to complete and returned Swan FM audience surveys. This was a disappointing response, but the students agreed to base their programming on the results of the survey they had received, which they calculated were roughly representative of the age and gender mix of the school.

The overall results of the audience survey were

• A broad request for extensive programming of Islamic music (20% of the total)
• R+B and Hip Hop as the most frequently requested styles
• Significant minority interests – eg: pop, dance, rock, banghra
• Few specific spoken word requests

The class decided that they would play Islamic music on Friday to reflect the school’s interest and would ‘pie chart’ the other styles to fit the remaining programme slots between Monday and Thursday.

We then downloaded the top 40 charts from a variety of sources and began to identify specific songs that we could buy to schedule in our programming. Several students were unsure about how to match specific song titles to styles but a core of knowledgeable students provided guidance. I found that I had significantly more knowledge of current pop than many of the students, which surprised me.

Finally a group of 4 students and I visited the HMV Shop and bought the Swan FM playlist with our Pathfinder funding. The cost was around £150. I then accompanied 2 students to an Islamic bookshop and bought 2 CDs of nasheeds selected by the students.

Once we had the CD singles back in school the students designed their own 20 minute playlists using the pie chart principle.

I then allocated professional roles to the students

• Presenter
• Producer
• Technician

Each role had a job description and an evaluation sheet. There were to be 3 shows each day; a ‘Rise and Shine’ breakfast show between 8.15 and 8.35 and two shows each lunchtime between 12.45 – 1.05 and 1.05 – 1.25. The aim of the Breakfast Show was to encourage punctuality by having a fun broadcast in progress as students arrived in school. However this ‘graveyard slot’ was unpopular with most of the Swan FM teams.

I asked for Swan FM news items at staff briefings and via leadership team but received little feedback. Finally I asked students to research specific items such as the weather forecast and the menu in the restaurant.

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