Keeping It Real with Rory Auskerry – November 2009

It’s been another busy and enjoyable month at Radio Orkney but for me there have been two obvious highlights. The first was completing a week of live broadcasts from the Orkney Library and Archive as part of BBC week there. Dave suggested to us that broadcasting live from there would be an interesting change of scene for us. We all thought it was great idea, so when the mics went live at half past seven on the Monday morning, I found myself sitting at a table in the library’s entrance lobby.

Shift patterns dictated that it was my turn to present the first programme from our new ‘studio’. I was pretty nervous about it because I’d never really presented much live stuff from anywhere other than our normal studio or the one from which we ran the student station at uni. To enable the whole thing to work we needed to have one member of the team based in the Castle Street studio to actually get the programme on and off the air at each end of the programme.

Because we wanted to do interviews with library staff about the things they were doing as part of the BBC week we also needed another one of our team in the library to carry out live interviews. So in the end I had Dave in the library with me, and Andrew back in the studio. The show went off without a hitch and I got a real buzz from the whole experience.

I didn’t present any other programmes that week but I was in every morning to press the buttons and switches in the library. This involved dialling the studio’s ISDN number (basically a high quality telephone line), setting the microphone levels for the presenters and playing in the pre recorded parts of the programme from my laptop computer.

We invited members of the public to come along to the library and watch the show going out live, and for me, one of the best things about the week of ‘outside broadcasting’ was the fact that we got immediate feedback from the folk sitting in front of us. Normally the morning show shift is handled by one of us aided by a co-presenter, so it was great fun having all of the available Radio Orkney staff in each morning. The entire week of programmes really felt like a team effort.

The second highlight of the month for me was getting behind the microphone to present the first ‘Hit The Beach’ programme of the new series. I love blues and rock music and being given the freedom to play some of my favourite tracks on the air is a real privilege. I just hope that I’m able to convey my enjoyment of the music to the folk listening at home.

Having spoken about the highlights I feel like I should give some balance and mention something, which has always been a bit of an issue for me. I am an inherent worrier. When I was a child I worried about everything from being late to missing trains and getting separated from mum in the supermarket.

Although I think I’ve relaxed a bit with age, I still worry about things more than most other people I know. In some respects it helps me because I pride myself of being on time and not forgetting important things. However, the nature of my current job at the radio station seems to be exacerbating the issue. When it’s my turn to present Around Orkney, I get up at around quarter to six and arrive in the office shortly before half past. This gives me just over an hour to check the scripts, find out if anything has happened over night that we need to broadcast such as coast guard incidents, add the weather forecast to the programme running order and make any other final adjustments. This is all fine, but my tendency to worry means that more often than not I find myself not sleeping properly the night before I’m ‘on’.

The most recent example was last week when I woke bolt upright in bed convinced that I had slept in and missed the show. I grabbed my watch from the bedside cabinet and read the time as twenty to eight in the morning. This threw me into a complete panic. I just couldn’t believe that both my alarms had failed! In desperation I checked my watch again only to realise I was reading it upside down. Suddenly twenty to eight became ten past two giving me a good three and a half left in bed.

I suspect there are a lot of people who have been in a similar situation. If you haven’t, believe me it is not pleasant. I certainly hope this kind of thing doesn’t become a regular occurrence or I suspect I may well suffer a heart attack long before I reach forty.

On a different note I have decided to put some of my spare time to good use and teach myself how to edit video footage on my computer. I really should have made more effort to learn the skills while I was at university but unfortunately none of the video production staff managed to inspire me to gain much of an interest in it.

I wish one of them had helped me to realise how I could use the skills in a news environment, or more simply for making little promotional video’s to encourage people to listen to my radio shows and podcasts. If they had I would have tried to learn the skills as a priority.

What I was shown was interesting and I enjoyed the teamwork side of video that you often don’t get with radio projects, but at the time it just didn’t enthuse me. So, in an attempt to rectify this lack of foresight, I have bought a small camcorder and some books about digital video editing. We’ll just have to see how I get on. Cheers.

Hit The Beach – November 3rd 2009 - Track Listing

Hit The Beach – November 3rd 2009 - Track Listing

Rolling Stones Let It Rock (LIVE)
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Jammin’ Me (LIVE)
Tommy Emmanuel Don’t Hold Me Back
Tina Turner Addicted To Love (LIVE)
Black Crowes Go Faster
Walk Of Life Dire Straits (LIVE)
Robbie Robertson/Eric Clapton Who Do You Love (LIVE)
The Small Faces Lazy Sunday
AC/DC Heatseeker (LIVE)
Chuck Berry No Particular Place To Go
Buddy Holly Rave On
Gary Moore Walking By Myself

More at www.roryauskerry.com
Thanks for listening!