It’s been an ambition of mine to host an occasional evening chat-based radio station for, oh, at least ten years now. Looking around, I see that technology has now just about made this possible, so I’m feeling the urge to do something about it, especially as quite a few folks on Twitter seems to be doing it quite well (@johncmayer and @enterbelladonna spring to mind).
So now I’m going to cast about to see if anyone has any advice/suggestions, and to see if anyone would be up for joining me. I envisage the format as being very casual – maybe just a two-hour show once a month initially, with 2-3 people sitting in a darkened room quaffing a lot of vino and talking amongst themselves, as well as interacting with the audience on the phone and over Twitter. Chat would be loosely based around one or two topics, or around a question that could be crowd-sourced. The idea is not to draw a large audience, but to entertain friends and interested parties. There seems to be a nicely diverse community of folk on Twitter who could get involved. Perhaps the location and hosts could change each time, depending on access to microphones, small soundproofed rooms, etc. It’s an experiment, basically.
So now I’m asking for advice. Has anyone done this before? What kind of set up is needed? My investigations so far point to Shoutcast as being a good service for hosting small radio stations. Any other recommendations? And does anyone have a small room where we could meet up and try this out? I’m willing to fork out for a couple of microphones, but can’t afford anything too fancy. Anyone fancy being a radio pundit for an evening? Add your thoughts in the comments box or DM me. All input much appreciated.
Intimate Internet Radio
I am happy to contribute… I can also supply a high quality radio mic and some experience of talking bollocks on radio and on the net…
You don’t actually need a studio… a living room can do it with a broadband connection..
You know how to get me… so, as they say on Dragon’s Den…. I am *IN*…. you may, however, want to go to the back of the room and think before accepting this offer….. and I wouldn’t blame you
Charon! I was hoping you’d say something like that. I have a lovely living room, but it is *right* next to the railway line, making any kind of recording endeavor impossible. How many people could you cater for in such a situation? Three? Four?
I’d go for a radio version of “After Dark” or “Dinner for Five” as a workable format, intimate chat on host of topics would be very engaging. This then leads to second issue: 3 or 4 people chatting is a slightly more complex set up in terms of mics etc and how you mix that. If you have one mic to capture all it will be like one of those awful teleconferences where everybody over talks one another and the mic will cut out. There are some good omni-directional mics out there, but what you gain in direction you loose in clarity of audio. Therefore you get into a mixing situation or an audio editing situation which means post-production and lose of “live”. I like the notion of Twitter feeds into discussion, it often requires an extra level of production to do this, I’ve produced things with live SMS and it’s always a bit hit and miss if you don’t plan it out and work out how it would work. Before worrying about technique, location and technology – shake down your format, it will serve you well. From there it’s easy to set up something. Happy to discuss further along Charon’s offer. I miss radio, once locked myself in the studio for 1hr live rant until they pulled the plug on me, I had watched too much of Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio.
Colmmu: Thanks for the feedback. Hmm, I’ve listened to one or two ad hoc live shows recently where three people have been talking at the same time (not over each other, obviously). I like the idea of at least three people for variety’s sake, and to give the participants a break. Will do some further investigation to see if this is feasible. I suppose one way to go it is for two people to be ‘on’ at any given time, and then the third can swap seats or mics when it is time to speak?
I like the idea of basing it around Twitter because there is generally a captive audience of people online (even on weekend evenings) who are tweeting anyway, so I figure there is more chance of some real interaction than with something purely two-way like SMS. I suppose it would require one participant to be checking Twitter during the broadcast, but this shouldn’t be too difficult. Once the format and the technical aspects are sorted, it would be a simple matter to ‘trail’ it a few days in advance on Twitter and to get people thinking about the topic or question, perhaps posting questions or comments in advance that could be read out and discussed at the time.
On the other hand, if there are three opinionated, slightly boozed up people in the ’studio’, lack of participation presumably becomes slightly irrelevant.
Love the idea of holding the radio hostage. Would you like to join for the trial broadcast?
More than happy to do trial broadcast Charon and I did a trial podcast not long ago and always fun to do. Maybe a simple clip mic set up using ECM mics into a mixer would suffice or a well positioned Sennheiser boom/ gun mic. I’ll have a chat to my sound engineer for a good cheap set-up that will work. Let us know what and when.
I think this is a fabulous idea for you. Get a group of people from all walks together to speak unrehearsed and unscripted – I would offer to participate in the who-is-the-most-screwed-up show if one is being contemplated.
Best of luck with it.
Colmmu: Great. Looks like we have the cast for the first experiment. I’ll get thinking on the format and once you’ve heard from your sound engineer, perhaps we can set a date sometime in mid October? I think a Friday or Saturday evening would be best, but depends on you and Charon.
Squozed: I shall be drafting you in in some form or other, mark my words.
Internet Radios are cool. i listen to them most of the time aside from watching videos on youtube. i am also trying to learn how to put my own personal internet radio.