So here’s how the conversation went. Our new boss arrived at Golden Square with a question for his news editor…
“What are we doing about the Olympics?”
The Olympics? On a rock music station? Aside from throwing CD’s around the studio, I’ve never seen an enormous amount of athletic prowess or interest displayed by any of our DJ’s or production staff. Surely he can’t be serious? Paint on the smile…
“Erm…what exactly do you mean?”
“Well I think it’s a great event that will unite Britain – we are a national radio station and we need to support our athletes – let’s make sure our audience understands they can stay in touch with the latest from the Games by listening to this station.”
The sinking feeling took hold. This was not going to be pleasant. How the hell were we going to deliver Olympic coverage to rival the BBC with a skeleton team of newsreaders and sports freelancers? Deep breath…
“Isn’t it all stitched up by the BBC? I’m not sure there’s much we can do.”
“Well try…”
That was three weeks ago when we had absolutely nothing prepared. Zilch. Nada. But after some furtive conversations and hastily arranged meetings we realised there were a couple windows of opportunity. With a gleaming new budget and a motivated team of journalists, we despatched our reporters across the UK to hunt down prominent athletes before they left the country for the Team GB training sessions.
At the same time our Digital Media team kicked into action and began planning a fantastic Olympics micro site.
The result is palpable today 08/08/08 with first class audio on-air, sound bites provided for production, exclusive online interviews with a number of our medal hopes, photographs, video content, an event planner, athlete profiles etc…and there’s more content to come with packages going up shortly on the history of the games and a look forward to London 2012…
http://www.virginradio.co.uk/news/sport/olympics/index.html
There’s no doubt if you listen to the station or look online you’ll know we are supporting Team GB all the way.
A great team effort from all concerned and another example of the Golden Square crew pulling together when it matters.
Andrew
