Week Four at Radio Kerry

Week four at Radio Kerry had me a little worried, now that I’d made a break for myself, seen what I was good at or at least liked doing, I had to prove myself. Sometimes it is prove yourself to yourself more than anyone else. Maybe one can spend too much time thinking about these things as well. In fact everyone in Radio Kerry has been very supportive of me and it’s up to me to learn from my experience.

Now that I had my own desk, in the Presenters room, I could work on my list of features I wanted to produce. The list was along one and gave me a lot to work off. First on my list was Kerry County Council and the services it provides. I wanted to see if I could spend some time with their on the ground staff, maybe find a talker with an interesting angle on their job.  So I dropped down to the second floor in the building, to see if I could get any leads. As it happened the first two people I met were also friends of mine and in a few minutes I had the names I wanted, or at least promising leads.

On Tuesday morning the producer of the Kerry Today Show told me that they really liked the piece I had done on the Kerry Mobile Library service. This was what came out of the three hours I spent with them during my second week at the station. The piece was good enough to be broadcast and went out on Wednesday of this week. It can be heard at   http://media.radiokerry.ie/mediamanager/embed/player/podcasts/9/item/4952  . When I heard it go live, my first piece from start to finish, I was over the moon. It really proved how much I’d learned from my time at the station.

On Thursday I took a trip down to the Dog Pound to see if I could find a story for a feature. This was one of my leads from Kerry County Council. Whilst talking with the wardens, the Horse Warden for the county asked if I’d visited the Kingdom Curragh Horse Project, out by Blennervile.  As I’d never heard of it he suggested we’d take a trip down the next morning, to see what was happening and maybe I could get a good piece from it.

The next morning I met James at the Pound and we went down to the Project. It’s a horse stables developed with the Tralee Travellers group and Kerry County Council with the idea of giving the Travellers a place to keep their horses and for Kerry County Council to keep stray horses off the roads. It works very well. I did a piece on the stables with the warden and after a few phone calls he set up an interview for me with one of the founders, a Traveller man by the name of Michael Quilligan. I spent some time with him up in his house and got a very good interview from him.

Back at Radio Kerry I put it all together, edited it and got 8 minutes of very good footage. The producers of the show liked it and took if for broadcast. It was broadcast yesterday morning, Friday, and again it was great to hear my own work on the air. This time I was in the car, with an old friend, which was very nice.

So my time at Radio Kerry has finished very well. I’ve learned a lot, especially where my strengths lie and how to achieve what I want from working in radio. It’s been a very enjoyable time and I’ve definitely come out the better for it.

Now that I’ve found my feet I don’t want to leave.....