Monday,
May 2nd, 2004 12:04 GMT
Student sounds |
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| Inside
the Surge Studio |
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Southampton
University's Student Radio Station, Surge, has had a busy year of
entertaining the city's students. Station Manager Matt Treacy takes
us behind the scenes... |
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Surge,
the radio station for the University of Southampton has had our biggest
ever year. The highlight so far has been our four week FM broadcast
in the spring - getting it there took a lot of hard work, dedication,
meetings, sleepless nights ... and money!
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| A
Surge Outside Broadcast |
Believe
it or not, the planning for the FM broadcast started in the middle
of the summer in 2003.
Surge does not have anywhere near the amount of money that is needed
for a temporary FM broadcast (a special kind of licence called a Restricted
Service Licence, or 'RSL').
Many different organisations need to be contacted, and ultimately
paid, to make the broadcast legal.
Like most radio stations we play music, but because this music is
copyrighted we have to pay royalties to companies. Ofcom, the main
radio regulatory body, also need paying before they will grant us
a licence to broadcast, so plenty of advertising and sponsorship had
to be raised.
To promote the station we produced 5,000 flyers, known as the 'Surge
credit card', designed to be carried about by students at all times,
because if a 'credit-card spotter' asks them to produce it then they
could be in line to win some big prizes.
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| The
Surge crew win a Student Radio Award |
On air,
it's a demanding task taking dozens of shows and over 60 individual
DJs and scheduling them to broadcast at times that not only fit in
with their lectures, but the sound that we want to create on-air (like
Urban nights on Wednesdays, or dance music on Thursday nights).
None of this happens without a great deal of planning, time and thought
going into it beforehand.
Take my 'Matty in the Afternoon' show for instance - we recently mounted
a campaign to revive the career of 90s pop stars, Let Loose after
a conversation about cheesey boy bands. Well if Peter Andre can have
a comeback, why can't Let Loose?!
Turning casual ideas into on-air reality is the challenge that as
a Station Manager, one comes to relish. However, nothing would be
possible without a very dedicated team helping to turn these crazy
ideas into reality.
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| Matt
puts on a brave face |
Our morning
show had a competition called 'Lecturer or Dead'.
Listeners had to work out whether names they were given belonged to
lecturers at Southampton University or were the names of people who
had died in the last 100 years - sounds a bit morbid but it was really
popular!
We
didn't shy away from big issues like student finances either. One
show had a competition called 'Badly Overdrawn Boy' - the listener
with the largest overdraft who got in touch with the show, won a tenner
out of the DJs own pockets!
The technical ability of the members of Surge have allowed us to do
things like broadcast live from the Union Bar, and stream the radio
station online so that we can be heard around the world from our award-winning
website throughout the year.
Southampton University Students' Union supports us tremendously. We
deliberately timed the FM broadcast to coincide with their elections
so that both groups can work together to get the most out of it.
Surge works hard to reach a brand new audience that probably has not
heard student radio before, and in turn the Students' Union used the
broadcast to encourage more students to vote.
Looking
back I can take stock of how far the station has come. The part that
amazes me is the fact that every single member of Surge is also trying
to study for a degree, sometimes even to obtain a doctorate, at the
same time as being heavily involved with a radio station.
When we finally switched off the FM transmitter for this year it was
the end of this particular chapter, but Surge continues to broadcast
online and on 1287AM to the university campus all year round.
This means that there is always something else that needs planning,
doing or fixing, which is fine by me because running a radio station
is much more fun than lectures!
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