Get into radio in the North
Posted on Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 at 3:20pm. #
A screensaver for the former GMG Radio brand “Century 105″. Which came on floppy disc. Ace!
I was quite lucky in how I got into radio. I managed to fool Chris Cooper that I knew something about football (ha!) and I got myself a job working for Pennine FM Sport, which mostly consisted of listening to LBC Radio on the IRN line from London and recording the football reports, then running into the studio whereupon Chris would play them to the good listeners of West Yorkshire.
From there, I managed to wheedle my way into “helping out” in the Pennine FM newsroom for a week, where I carried a monster mobile phone for journalist Maria Duarte as we went out to a house fire and did some proper reporting. (Well, she did. I just carried the mobile phone. It was bloody heavy.)
GMG Radio appears to like doing things differently. If you’ve got the passion, they’re running something called the “Futures Factory” in the North West and Yorkshire. The interesting bit is that it’s open to anyone. Their website particularly talks about journalists, producers, sales people, ‘digital wizards’ and marketeers – and I’d reckon that, if I know anything about this business, they’ll have fewer people in those areas – which means that if you reckon your future is in radio but not on a microphone, then this is an excellent opportunity, and one you might want to grasp.
I’m reliably told that if you enter in the next few days (whatever it says on the website), you’ll still get considered. So, get to it.
I’ve never worked for GMG Radio, but I do admire much of the things they do: from documentaries to a proper regard for great journalism, they’re bucking the trend elsewhere in the industry. Their Futures Factory is another neat thing this company does.
