Notes on a wild camping donut
I didn't take any notes after the last live donut I did for Good Morning Scotland in September. I'm not sure why, because if I did they would have been numerous.
For those unfamiliar with radio jargon, a donut is when the presenter in the studio hands to you, somewhere in a relevant location, and you interview one or two guests live. There's usually a little intro and some words to wrap up and hand back to the studio as well. You broadcast back to base using a small satellite dish.
It went OK for a first time, but I made a few mistakes:
Stumbled a bit over my intro, which didn't help confidence
Asked the first guest too many questions, which left much less time for the second guest
Totally panicked when I heard the producer in my ear warning me I had one minute to go, and wrapped the whole thing up in about 30 seconds
Tried to predict the course of the discussion too much, and what questions I would ask when
And some extra, non editorial notes:
A colleague who was there to help advised it's really important to keep your guests chatting and warmed up while you're waiting to go on air. I was too busy listening for my cue
So first preparations for Tuesday's live were:
Coincidentally, the topic was the same as September and so was one of the guests.
The approach I took this time was to script my intro quite carefully, and the first question I asked each of the guests. Then I just had a list of possible follow-up questions to ask, depending which way the discussion went. This seemed to work better. I also forced myself to stay calm when the one minute warning came and didn't wrap up till I heard "that's you".
It wasn't perfect. There was definitely one question I should have asked that I missed. But it was better. Thanks again to Huw for setting up the satellite and the advice.