It’s been a busy few days for me since I touched down in Sydney on Sunday night. I was fortunate to fly down with the wonderful Qantas (no product placement here), although I will have to mark them down for serving spinach for dinner, which would be my least favourite food in the world even though I’ve never had it.
Anyway enough of non-internship goss for today! My first impression of 2GB is that it’s one of the craziest places I’ve ever seen in my life. During my first day I realised how action packed the show is from 3pm, it may seem all smooth when listening on the radio but in the control room it’s far from that. You’ve got phones going off with people wanting to voice their opinion or letting us know breaking news happening around Sydney. You’ve also got producers working on developing stories to go on the air, rushing to get a quick interview or managing the flow of the show.
On my first day I was lucky to sit in Studio 3 where ‘Sydney Live with Ben Fordham’ is broadcasted from. Apart from being fascinated from watching the show go to air, I enjoyed when we had guests in studio. Today like everyday they had Bill Woods from Ten News Sydney in from next door to talk about their broadcast. A highlight would be from my conversation to him on how I enjoyed his work on the V8’s many years ago turned into a great conversation about Bill and Ben being mistaken for completely different people. Ben said some guy at a petrol station thought he resembled Grant Denyer and asked about tomorrows weather. Bill said he always got referred to as Matt White when he was at Channel 10 or the bloke who does Nine News not Ten News.
Tuesday was another eventful day and it started with almost bumping into Morning host Ray Hadley which could of ended badly after quite few people are scared of him, me included. Like everyday before the news conference we have to surf newspapers, online, etc to find stories that can be presented on the show that is conversational for the listeners, interesting or a little unusual. Today was different as Ben came in for the news conference instead of the usual phone conference they do because of his Nine Network commitments. After the planning of the show was done it was time to get to work. Most of the crew were working on the major story of the day being the Super Trawler banning which they had a big campaign on the show, which lucky for me, meant I got a fair bit of work to do. From writing new reads for stories such as Centrelink abuse and Clive Palmer’s driving history to doing research on an up coming segment on Vitamin D.
One thing bad about 2GB is the fact that all the corridors resemble a maze. I found this out trying to get back from other side of the building to the Sydney Live production office a little challenging and it got so bad I nearly had to call someone to rescue. I remembered I was a skilled navigator and got myself out just fine ha-ha.
Until next time, stay safe