BBC Broadcasting House

"One, two, three, four .. eleven!"
"Don't count them!"

Eleven people were in a tiny editing room full of screens, editing equipment, script notes and head phones for just one radio programme. But this programme, The Bottom Line, is edited for four news channels, not just for Radio 4. The Bottom Line also goes out to

• World Service radio
• World News TV
• News Channel TV

Although located in a radio studio, it is also broadcast on TV. So the eleven people were involved in editing the programme for four different versions. This meant that for example the editor for the World News had the presenter reword a question about "high-street banks", a commonly understood term in the UK to "physical banks" (as opposed to electronic banking interfaces).

The host and presenter was Stephanie Flanders, standing in for Evan Davis, who is hard to follow because he is so experienced and well known. Not surprisingly, SF looked nervous at the start of the recording, as she introduced her guests, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar names. On the retakes she was word perfect. In tone and body language, she gave the impression of knowing what she wanted to ask her guests. From the editing room, the editors prompted her with supplementary questions that arose from the conversation, not the script. She brought in the extra questions so fluently that no-one watching or listening would know about the prompts in her ear. Yet self critically she murmured afterwards that it would have been better if she'd had more to say.

After the main recording, they recorded one minute video blogs, one from SF and one from the Open University Business School representative, Leslie Budd, who also writes a blog for the programme. This is because the OU works with the BBC on The Bottom Line, as you can see from their shared Open2.net web site. The OU has provided funds for programme equipment, and in the radio studio I could see that equipment allowing the cameras to move smoothly around thus allowing the TV production as well as radio.

This is a great programme with three really interesting guests in a interesting discussion about mining, banking and music, going out on

• BBC Radio 4 tomorrow evening
• World Service radio
  
• World News TV on Saturday and Sunday
  
• News Channel TV on on Saturday and Sunday
  

Why was I there? Because next week, Les is on holiday and I volunteered to write the blog for him, then discovered they do the video blog too, so Les took me to see the layout, what happens, who creates, produces, and edits it. That's a lot of people:

• three guests and their minders
• one presenter
• three or four camera crew
• producer
• OU Broadcast and Learning executive
• and the eleven editors.

Radio training

At minus five minutes notice, I found myself on another media training course - this time for radio interviews. See InsideEdge. Again the training ratio was amazing: two trainers: five trainees:

• Dave McGarvie talking about volcanoes, and about to be interviewed for real
• Delia Da Sousa Correa talking about Katherine Mansfield's short stories
• Leslie Budd talking about economics and enterprise
• Richard Bundell talking about enterprise and ecological housing

Someone had dropped out, hence my invitation.

The session started with discussion and some explanation from two journalists, together with their presentation of slides and sound examples to get their point across.

Answer the question. For example, someone was asked the benefits of her research, but responded by talking about the event she was going to where people would discuss the benefits. That response doesn't answer the question.

What did I learn?

• State the benefit of your research immediately otherwise, why should the audience care?
• Expect contentious and personal questions

We had two practical sessions:

• a three minute face-to-face interview
• a two minute interview at a distance where you're with just a mic and can't see the presenter, like being at the end of a phone

Both interviews were difficult because even the face-to-face presenter having asked a question isn't looking at you, but at his notes and listening to his head phones to whatever the editor or producer is saying, like warning that the weather or pips are due.

The trainers gave each of us a cue comment and told us in advance what it would be. I loved mine because it was along the lines of

"Expensive management consultants are amongst the lowest, hated as much as estate agents and journalists, and even more hated on expensive IT projects. what value can they bring. We have here Liz H from the OU - Liz are consultants of value?"Yes, because for every pound an organisation spends on consultants they return about £6."

I said, and referred them to the facts I remembered from blogging on the value of consulting a couple of weeks ago. Then I could give an example of how managing them well could save money. stumbling over my example revealed my need to practise saying it aloud. The last and personal questions was,would I be a consultant? Ah! What a trick because consultants seem so powerful, knowledgeable and earn so much.

No, I'd rather be an effective public sector manager.