Student Radio Association

Entry for Best Newcomer SRAs 2009 

Entrant: Julie Ann Lough

Radio Station: RaW (Radio Warwick)  

Hi there! I’m Julie Ann Lough and a final year PhD student. (Yes it’s like an AA meeting, where we know we are a final year but not too sure how long the final year will last….mine is currently over 18 months long!).

Last October, after much harassment from some of my friends, I signed up to Radio Warwick (RaW). I had a vague idea of doing a late night talk show. I’m Irish, we can talk to ourselves if all else fails! I was thinking along the lines of the Stephen Nolan show on Radio 5 live or many of the late night shows on local radio. I wanted it to be an outlet for younger students to come and look for advice. It would also be a place for listeners to offer their advice too. My shows have been 2 hour slots on either a Sunday or a Friday night, it varied term to term, and believe me 2 hours in a studio on your own with no back up can be very challenging!

Since I am usually the last show on both nights, I have no technical team available so I have had to learn a lot of technical bits for when our music library crashes or when all the emails and texts stop coming in!  

As well as doing my late night chat show, Late Night Chat with Julie Ann, I have gotten involved with lots of other bits around the station. I cover other shows at very little notice where I can and I help the production team with jingles and voice overs (having a “regional” accent helps!).  

When I starting doing my first show in November, I never thought I would get as involved as I did. In March, I was asked by the speech team to head up a comedy quiz show “Mock the Wick” in which we recorded a one off “mock the week” type show in which we looked at all the manifestos of the union candidates. This was part of 4 hours of live radio and television joint broadcasting between RaW and WarwickTV. (You can see it on youtube if you want!). This was amazingly good form and I received a lot of praise from the RaW executive over how well and naturally I chaired and kept conversations going with good comedy.  

As a result of that I receive a phone call at 1pm on the day of the election results coverage to ask me to host interview sessions during the live election results coverage beginning at 9! (generous radio notice times I hear you say!). In the union there was a serious interview room (for elected candidates) and a casual room, for lighter interviews with candidates before their positions were announced and for light-hearted reviews of the results. I was asked to do the light hearted interviews. To me, the best way to do this was in a lounge format, informal chat on a couch with a cup of lemonade (the room is an alcohol free one) and lots of sweets and biscuits!

I was originally supposed to do only 3 interviews to help fill times slots, but due to the fact everything was running so smoothly for us in the lounge and their were technical difficulties in the main room I enter up doing 12 interviews on the night with everyone from all the presidential candidates, to some of the losers, to the elections committee group and the outgoing student union president. The feedback I got from this was amazing and it really gave the confidence to think maybe I could actually make a career in the media.   

In May I went on to make a documentary on young people and volunteering for my chat show. I want to Lourdes in France, which as you may or may not know is a place of Catholic pilgrimage with a special emphasis on the sick. I have been volunteering there for many years with a volunteer ambulance group from Ireland, they bring a large number of high dependency patients to Lourdes every year and the majority of their volunteers there are below 30. The group from Ireland are part of a global organisation so I interviewed many nationalities. I wanted to share this special experience with my listeners, so after 12 hours of recordings and interviews I produced a 35 minute documentary which I am very proud off. The documentary covered all aspects of the trip, from the patients themselves and what they get from the trip and the importance of young people being there for them. I also had interviews with many of the volunteers themselves who spoke about of what they get from helping out. 

My late night chat show consist of a phone/text/email in where listeners send in problems or comments or often just rants they want to get of their chests. I try to give out honest and frank advice, sometimes it’s tough love too.

A variety of issues are covered ranging from sex and sexuality to finances, cooking ideas, dating, course work and any other issue that faces students. The regular features on the show include a “wind down half hour” where the last thirty minutes of the show is easy listening, to help listeners unwind after the day and head off to bed (I am the last show on). One of the more popular features is a “Get it off your chest hour” which is a once a month general open rant for the listeners to email or phone in with rants.

Recently I have found I have listeners outside of university life and I am getting a lot of teenagers from the locality emailing for relationship advice too. Which is pretty remarkable and I am glad I can help out in some way.   

My general presenting style is light and friendly, I like to talk to people not at them and make them feel comfortable, taking a real interest in what people say.