Live from UEA: Students join Broadland Radio
By: Communications
Students on the Journalism degrees broadcast live news and travel for eight hours on Broadland Radio, working alongside professional presenters to produce programmes.
More than twenty students from all year groups worked from 06.00am to produce and present news and travel bulletins on the radio station which broadcasts on digital radio across Norfolk and north Suffolk.
For the Broadland Radio presenters it was a trip down memory lane, returning to the studios where they began their careers on Colegate in Norwich on 5 November.
Tabby Dryhurst, third year journalism student, was the news editor and led the breakfast show team. She said: "I was really nervous but super excited. I've loved every second of it because everyone pulled together as a team.
“The pressure is different when you know that it's going to be broadcast on a real radio station, but I was really happy with how it turned out. Editing and producing is something that I want to go into, so this was a great experience."
Katy Whittaker, also a third-year student. read the news in the flagship breakfast show, she said: "It was nervewracking but really fun, I had a few technical difficulties, but that always happens with something that's live.
“The fact that it was being broadcast on a real radio station helped because I just had to go for it and I proved to myself that I can do it."
The studios in Colegate in Norwich city centre where originally built 41 years ago for Radio Broadland, which later became Heart Radio.
UEA took over the use of the building in 2020 after Heart Radio moved out the previous year. They now use the building as a city centre base for teaching the UEA journalism degrees.
Course leader, Associate Professor Clare Precey, said: “The students did a brilliant job, it was fantastic to see so many of them working as a team from Year One to Master's level to produce the news and travel.
“They worked extremely hard and were really professional. We have practice broadcasts as part of the course on a weekly basis, but the fact that this was on a real radio station made it so much more realistic for them.”
Managing Director of Broadland Radio, Bob Norman, said: "It is amazing to be working with the UEA providing real time experience for their students. To do it in the original studios in Colegate Norwich is icing on the cake for us.
"We are so fortunate to be given this opportunity to work with the UEA students. We are equally fortunate to be able to relive those halcyon days of local radio."
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