Interviewer: Jason Russell
Interviewee: Matt Dean
Transcriber: Jason Russell
Date and Location of Interview: 04/04/2012, BBC Humberside studio, Radio Broadcasting room, Hull.
Jason Russell: So Matt what is actually your job role and job title at the BBC.
Matt Dean: I am Sports Editor; I took over from David Burns last June. So my job is to look manage two other people full time members of staff; two other Sports Journalist’s in Mike White and Gwilym Lloyd. It is also to look after freelancers as well for all our games on a match day basis. So we’re looking at all our rugby league commentators, people like Craig Murdoch, Chris Park, then summarisers as well for all our respective commentary games as well, so they all need booking in, in advance. I also look at which games go on which frequencies, which is always [pause] a hot topic really, we do spend quite a lot of time debating what games go on which frequencies, and basically help the running of the sports team on a day to day basis. It’s my sort of role to look after SportsTalk as well, who comes in to do the programme, whose rota’d to do it. Editorially, we have bulletins at breakfast time at lunchtime and in the afternoon. So I have to keep my eye across which stories are out there, and decide editorially which stories lead our bulletins, and what sort of angles we take for all our stories. And it’s about generating ideas for programmes as well, for Saturday, and Sunday, the Rugby League programme, and the Football programme. We have an hour and a half’s build up on a Saturday; I present the Saturday programme, so it’s sort of down to me really to generate some ideas for that, and how it all shapes up really for the weekend. So there’s quite a lot going on really,
J.R: Yeah
M.D: Also the replying to listeners as well, if anybody’s got a query or if anybody wants to complain about anything then I have to generally reply to that as well.
J.R: So how have you found that change from…[interjection]?
M.D: It’s a lot more demanding; the team has been reduced in number. When David Burns was the Sports Editor the team was four in number but now it’s sort of been reduced to three, because he now presents the morning programme, so that’s sort of put a lot more pressure on us really in some respects. Because we’re still having to service the same amount of output the same amount of hours, we’re still doing SportsTalk we’re still dong all the same things that we did before; bulletins in the morning at lunchtime, in the afternoon, and also Saturday sport goes on air at half past one, we’ve still got the Rugby league to look after as well. So it’s still [pause] very demanding, and there sometimes doesn’t feel like there’s enough hours in the day to do it all. You get there in the end.
J.R: Would you say that in the time that you have worked for the BBC, your job roles, whatever part you’ve worked in, have they adapted and changed a lot?
M.D: It’s changed a lot. I mean when I first started working for the BBC in nineteen ninety nine, online was in its infancy really. And there wasn’t things like Twitter, or anything like that. That’s very much changed how we work, in quite a lot of ways really I think. And we do now service online as well so any stories that you sort of hear on the radio you should be reading about them on the BBC Sport website as well. And we’ve been trained; all of us have been trained to put stories up on the BBC Sport website. So that’s affected obviously how much we can devote to putting stuff into radio production, how much time we have to put in to radio production, and it affects our, daily working routine really. We always have to think across online as well as just on the radio as well, so that’s definitely affected it, and I think that in the course of the last sort of couple of years Twitter’s sort of taken off. And there’s quite a lot of stories that could come through Twitter now, and you always have to be reactive to that, and that’s all around the clock, I mean I can get home at ten o’clock at night and I can check Twitter and I can see one of the clubs has Tweeted, and they’ve tweeted an update to a story which we obviously have to reflect. So it’s changed it very much, and I think that ya know when I first started working here definitely, you could sort of go home at night there wasn’t really [sentence change], and the stories wouldn’t develop a lot more than probably what you’d left for the bulletin order for the morning. But now you can get home having put the morning’s bulletin running order together, for the next day, and things can change. So you have to then be quite adaptable to that and change whatever you put in if the story has moved on.
J.R: So like, would you say that…[interjection]
M.D: So new technologies have definitely impacted on the way we work.
J.R: So, since you’ve first come in then in nineteen ninety nine, would you say that the actual broadcast and media industry is what you expected it to be?
M.D: It’s hard to say. I think it’s probably, it’s probably [pause] it’s expanded at a rate that I thought it wouldn’t do, I didn’t really [mumble] not that I necessarily thought, had any sort of set plans or thoughts as to how it would unfold, but I do think that, ya know, all the clubs now as well, they’ve all got their own websites. Whereas when I started, the clubs weren’t that fussed about what they had on their websites. They weren’t, [change sentence] Now all the clubs tend to prioritize their own websites, so whenever we deal with a lot of the clubs, then they probably give us limited access to certain players, because they want the player interviewed first, with the, say if they’ve got a new signing, they’ll want him on their website first rather than giving it to, to the local media, us and the daily mail. So that’s what you’re up against really, that’s something else. And it’s become harder I think to break stories as well, because clubs are more determined to break stories on their website, rather than see their managers give us a story. When I first started it wasn’t, it wasn’t like that, and access to players has become more restricted, as a consequence I think. In the old days when I first started you could sort of ring up any manager locally, now it’s more difficult, because you, they only take phone calls from you in a very sort of, on a very special occasion, and in the week you can’t just pick up the phone and ring the manager any more. You have to ring the media, the head of media at any respective clubs now. It’s not as easy to get stories I don’t think now.
J.R: Was it always Sports Broadcasting that you wanted?
M.D: I always wanted to work in radio. I got a degree in Broadcast Journalism, at Nottingham Trent at University. And I came out of Nottingham having got my degree, and I started to freelance. And I came out and did, freelance for Sky, on their Soccer Saturday programme; I did that for a year. And that meant just reporting from local games, whenever they needed a reporter. I did games for them on a Saturday, into ya know Geoff Stelling’s programme. That was a good experience. Then I started freelancing for radio Humberside. I did a few other little bits and pieces, but they were the main things really. And then I started working on contract at Radio Humberside in ninety nine, and then I became staff the following year.
J.R: In that time then that you were freelancing did you ever have an inspiration, somebody that you looked up to and thought; I want their job?
M.D: I always had a, [sentence change] I always had, [sentence change], I always listened to radio Humberside sport actually. And I always sort of respected what we did here, and I always, as a listener I think you kind of want to get a bit more involved don’t you sometimes, if you are listening to the programme, you want to know how it all works, and you have a genuine passion and enthusiasm for it so, I always felt that that helped me. And I, ever since I was young though I wanted to work in to radio, radio was always sort of the best medium for me. I didn’t really; I still don’t feel television quite has the lure that I think radio has for me. Radio has just; I just think that the immediacy in radio is what’s so appealing for me really. And that’s why I really wanted to work in, in this industry. So yeah, that’s sort of, I always had that vision, so that always was the thing that drove me really.
J.R: Would you say that your career in radio has taken you in the direction that you first intended?
M.D: Yeah I think so yeah. I still have ambition, and I’d still like to work higher and do more. But I think that we’re very luck to do what we do here, because we can commentate, we can present, we interview, we do a bit of everything really. Whereas I think if you go to somewhere like five live, you don’t necessarily get such a variety of your working day, you might be just researching stories for other people, and writing for other people, and producing other people. And I quite like doing what I do really, I mean, we’re all very fortunate that we get on air all the time, and we’re able to do games, and see a lot of action and its good really. But I still am ambitious and I’d still like to do more, I don’t see being at radio Humberside, I don’t necessarily see myself being here for the rest of my life, but it’s a good place to work, because basically the bosses tend to let you get on with what you wanna do. They trust what you do, and, even though we’ve got quite a small team, it’s quite a tight close knit team, and they tend to leave you to it, trust your judgement on things.
J.R: Would you say in the time that you have been here, because of the impact of social media, Twitter and such, can you see in maybe the next ten years that developing even further and changing your job role?
M.D: [raised voice] Oh without a doubt, yeah without doubt. I think it will change the industry more for people who work in newspapers, because newspaper sales are [prolonged] declining. Whereas radio audience figures are as high I think as they’ve ever been. In the last sort of, If you look at Rajar figures from the last sort of year or two, more people are listening to radio now than probably ever before, because they can listen through online, you can listen on your laptop, you can listen through your mobile phone. So there are more ways to listen to the radio. So I think that the industry in itself is quite vibrant really. And I don’t think that, I don’t feel a major threat from Twitter and things like that. Although having said that it’s, it’s just another story, sorry it’s just another means to monitor, I think that we just have to be aware of it. I think we need to be on the ball when it comes to Twitter, and I think we need to be fully switched on to it, ya know. And we do try and do a bit of Tweeting ourselves, ya know, it’s difficult on the resources that we’ve got, but we do try to on a weekend now, Tweet stuff. Ya know, team news as a soon as it comes through, ya know, whenever there’s a goal on a Saturday, or a tri on a Sunday, we try and Tweet that. We just try and keep across it that way. And we also let people know what frequencies their team will be on that day. Ya know, in terms of commentaries, so yeah, we try and use it as much as we can, but it’s trying to keep, you’re spreading yourselves quite thinly across radio and everything else ya know. It’s just, it’s, if you haven’t got the resources necessarily to, nobody is solely brought in to look after Twitter or anything like that, ya know what I mean.
J.R: Could you see that happening in the future, possibly?
M.D: No, I probably can’t. Because I think that resources are so tight. That, I mean the license fees have been frozen for a few years yet, but that means that we are having to make, as a consequence, cutbacks. And, or be very careful as to how we spend money. And if anything there’s probably less money gonna be around to bring people in to do that sort of thing. We’ll just have to be box clever with the way we work in the future and with the staff that we’ve got, and prioritize, and see what, see where things go with it in terms of the new media.
J.R: That’s great thanks
M.D: No bother
No comments:
Post a Comment