I've been spending a *lot* of time at Radio 4 recently. The Today Programme editor Ceri Thomas has invited me to spend a couple of days a week acting as a kind of web editor reviewing the way the programme's site gets updated every day and also rethinking how the web site might best support and enhance the radio programme (serve the existing audience and bring in new listeners etc). Today is 50 years-old in October so this is a good time for reviewing things. BTW - if you know anyone who is 50 on the same day, let me know. We're trying to find as many of them possible in order to compare notes about how the last half-century has been.
I've also had a great time working with Pam Marshall (producer of the Oldton radio play) and Frank Boyd putting together a sequence of workshops and blue-sky lab days for people working in radio drama at the BBC. This has been a very inspiring event involving demos and talks from lost of very smart people both inside and outside the Beeb, plus a fantastic amount of creative brainstorming from the participants. I got to hear about a lot of projects that had kind passed me by. For example, some very interesting experiments at Radio 7 and a new interactive drama proposition from Paul Bennun at Somethin Else.
Two things come out of all this for me:
1. Radio is GREAT. And there's so much more to be done with it in tandem with the web.
2. How and why anyone would think I'd be the person to do these jobs is a mystery to me. But I guess I shouldn't worry about that and just enjoy the ride...
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