Media Training Update w/c 16th September

Good morning. It’s Monday 16th September.

Conference season. Speeches which (rightly or wrongly) will get coverage this week: Ed Davey – Tuesday, Nigel Farage – Friday. Labour kicks off on Sunday.

Monday: Huw Edwards is sentenced at Westminster Magistrates Court

Manchester City’s FFP hearing expected to get underway

Tuesday: Super eclipse moon

Wednesday: Inflation figures

10 years ago: Scottish independence referendum

Thursday: Bank of England announce their final pre-Budget interest rate decision

Friday: First early in-person voting begins in US election

Saturday: Elections in Sri Lanka 

Sunday: Autumn begins

30 years ago: first episode of Friends aired

Here’s the second of our new set of audio diaries taking you inside radio and TV studios…

Part 4 Episode 2 of Year of The Expert focuses on Presenter Insights.

LISTEN HERE

As we often warn in media training sessions, the lines are so blurred between radio, TV and print now as to be almost non-existent. Here’s Janice Turner in the Times last week:

“I was asked by the Times Radio breakfast show to speak about my recent column on women in Afghanistan. The slot was early, so I requested the Zoom link be audio only. The tricky thing about radio these days is your contribution is generally filmed, so you must be camera-ready whatever the hour which means, if you’re a woman, the faff of applying make-up. Anyway, I blearily tuned in to the call and argued the case for a sporting boycott of this gender apartheid state, assuming only my voice could be heard. How wrong I was. Ten minutes later on X up popped a clip of me in my pyjamas (bright blue ones with cheerful motifs of oranges), my unbrushed hair at mad angles.”

“For all the well-known and well-paid presenters on BBC TV and radio, the heart of the BBC are the legions of lesser-known producers and fixers slogging away on relatively low salaries on stories that they think make a difference. We will miss them when they’ve gone.”

A good column from Jane Martinson on BBC journalist Kate Lamble. Her reporting on Grenfell was public service journalism at its best. 

She has now been made redundant.

READ MORE

For the first time online has overtaken television in an annual survey of the UK’s news habits (Source: Ofcom).

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That said, the same Ofcom report found twice as many Brits got their 2024 election news from TV as from social media.

READ MORE

And while we are on the subject, a quiz question. Name the two largest news websites in the world. (Answer in the footnotes)

Footnotes:

On this day: The UK crashed out of the ERM on this day in 1992.

Weather: 20 degrees in Exeter. 15 degrees in Aberdeen. 34 degrees in Bangkok.

Coffee? Inside Edge is in Brighton and London this week.

Quiz: The BBC (1.2 billion visits) and CNN (710 million visits) are the two largest news websites in the world (source UK Press Gazette)

Mutts: Leo gamely manages to open half an eye…

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Have a brilliant week.

All at Inside Edge