Mentors
In the days of open access, when anyone could sign up and do a show, a big frustration was eagerly waiting for your first slot to come around and then find you couldn't be heard.
It might be that the new presenter couldn't connect to the Shoutcast server, or they were streaming at the wrong rate or their microphone didn't work.
A first show could be a fraught experience for a new presenter. If people spotted a new name on the schedule, you'd often have a bit of a crowd in the shoutbox eagerly waiting your first outing.
If the presenter had problems, everyone would be shouting advice. Even with the best will in the world, it's not nice to have your very first audience piling in with instructions and stark warnings. The threat of being kicked off by the AutoDJ was like having a robot executioner standing over you,
To help with first show nerves, avoid technical hiccups and ensure everyone had a fighting chance with their first broadcast, we started a Mentoring process.
Presenters could offer themselves as mentors - a helping hand to get a new joiner up to speed on the ways of the one.
Mentors - generally other experienced presenters - could give a newbee a crash course in the software required, how to connect to the shoutcast server and ensure they could be heard correctly.
Once the mentor was confident the new presenter was good to go, it should only require a minor change of settings for that new presenter to broadcast on the 1Radio server.
We also created a mentor guide that listed the essential techniques required in getting on air and explained some of the back office functionality available to presenters.
The mentor system worked fairly well but like most aspects of 1Radio, it was the same core group of presenters who offered to help out in this way.
Posted by Tim on Thu 12 May 2022 at 13:09 and viewed 578 times.
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