Well this is my first ever blog entry. Hi I’m Keely, last year I studied for my BTEC National in Media (Moving Image), which was a great foundation for studying for this course. After completing the two years of the foundation degree I would like to continue on and complete my 3rd Year at Bath Spa studying creative writing.
I hope to peruse a career within journalism either writing for T.V, Radio or Newspapers. I have had a brief taster of what it's like to work within a newspaper office, when I completed a day's work experience last year at 'The Weston Mercury'.




We are a little late starting our blogs at Weston College because of we were waiting for our new co-ordinator Kim Brooke to start.

The first week of the BC1001 Module, we looked at the different job roles within the media industry. Having Kim as our lecturer is fantastic because she has great experience of working within the industry, and knows some of the job titles extremely well.

Some of the roles in which we looked at were:

Production Secretary - This job role involves admin duties such as answering phones, typing, handling petty cash and assisting researchers, directors and producers where it is required.
I discovered that this job role involved long hours, with little pay and it can be a very stressful job because as a production secretary you are responsible for ensuring all your tasks are completed as well as assisting others with theirs when ever it's required. The Production secretary has huge responsibilities in making sure everything is arranged on time and everyone is informed with what's happening when.

Researcher - This job role involves gathering all information required for a particular programme. Researchers have the responsibility of finding any contacts, any locations needed for filming. They have to present their findings to the producer in a presentation format. They are required to assist others in putting the programme material into its final form. Plus other duties such as finding relevant music for the programme, thanking contributors and assisting other staff when required.
Again this job seems very stressful and contains long hours the researcher has a huge responsibility in completing their tasks in order to make sure that the programme is completed in time.

Assistant Producer - this role includes contributing ideas for the programme, researching material for the programme, assist with filming, produce script material, assist with directing and organise other staff and contributors. An assistant producer is required to adapt written material, be willing to provide original ideas have an understanding of production techniques and knowledge of costs, and budgets.

We also looked and discussed other job roles such as Development Researcher, Director, Executive Producer, Commissioning Editor, camera, Sound, Series Producer, Offline Editor, Online Editor and Dubbing.



The second week we looked and discussed OFCOM Regulations and BBC Guidelines. Although I had a brief knowledge of what these involved, I gained a deeper understanding of them, which I will need to use later in the course and after. I will be able to refer to these when producing our group project for the BC1003 Module.


I thought that OFCOM seemed to be a little more relaxed with radio programmes than T.V programmes. For example in:

THE BROADCASTING CODE - Section 1 - PROTECTING UNDER 18's.

'Radio broadcasters must have particular regard to times when children are particularly likely to be listening. Meaning of

"when children are particularly likely to be listening":

This phrase particularly refers to the school run and breakfast time, but might include other times.'

I thought that this was a little brief and strange that they hadn’t stated any specific time, they only mentioned ‘school run and breakfast time’.

I discovered that the members of The OFCOM Content Board such as Richard Ayre, and Anthony Lilley have all had experience within the broadcast industry. What I found interesting was many of them have worked for independent companies, and Pam Giddy was the first female director for Charter88.




The BBC Editorial Guidelines, is the BBC’s own version of the OCOM regulations. Programmes in which the BBC broadcast must obey by these guidelines. These guidelines are very similar to OFCOM’s.


During the second week we looked at the New TV Quiz Rules. After all the recent events with companies misleading viewers about the competitions. The new rules are forcing TV quizzes to inform viewers of their chances of winning and getting on air.

Copyright – After looking at the copyright website and discussing copyright issues. I was surprised to find out that you can’t copyright ideas for programmes, even if you write up the treatment. Others can still take your idea and produce it making one slight adaptation.
Some ways of copyrighting your work could be sending it to yourself and not opening it, publishing your idea in a book, or producing it as a radio programme.
Work that is copyright protected is marked with the copyright symbol ©.




Each week in the ‘Broadcast’ newspaper the ratings for T.V programmes are published. As a class we looked and discussed the ratings for week ending the 4th November 2007. We found out that ‘Coronation Street’ and ‘Eastenders’ made up the top ten. ‘Coronation Street’ being the most watched programme of the week, reaching 48.36% of the share. This made me wonder why the soaps were top of the ratings?

















Yesterday our task was to go out as individuals and gather vox pops on audience consumptions. After carefully consideration and taking into account the T.V ratings gathered by BARB. The question I decided to ask people was,

‘Why do you think people watch T.V soaps?’

At first I felt a little nervous about going up to people and asking my question. However after the first few times I became more confident and manage to gather plenty of content ready to edit into vox pops.
I have only used ‘ProTools’ a couple of times before so I lacked a little confidence in using the programme, however I felt that my vox pop edit was of a good standard and contained good content for answering my question. I also developed a further understanding of how to use the ‘ProTools’ and would feel a little more confident in using it in the near future.

During this task I was able to have the role of director by directing who I was going to ask, what location I needed. I also had the role of sound recorder, having the responsibility in ensuring that all sound was being received, there were no technical problems and everything was working ok. I had the role of editor once all the content had been collected and was ready to be edited together. I thought I handle each job role well, however I was working as an individual although I was interviewing people I didn't exactly have a crew and I would imagine that these roles are a lot more stressful and full on when more people are involved with the project.

Well that’s all for now!