JZ's Diary
Head of 大象传媒 Radio Scotland, Jeff Zycinski, with a sneak preview of programme plans and a behind-the-scenes glimpse of his life at the helm.
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Nightmare In Argentina
I don't know if you saw any one the press coverage about Ally MacLeod's widow Faye. It all comes from an edition of The Pain of The Game that we're airing on 大象传媒 Radio Scotland tomorrow. In the programme, Faye talks about that infamous footballing humiliation in Argentina and how Ally almost died two weeks after the tournament.
I think the most touching part of the programme is when Faye describes seeing Ally on television, his head in his hands as he watched Scotland lose the game with Peru. She phoned him after the game and says he sounded alone and despondent. She asked if if he had anyone he could confide in.
"Not really, " said Ally.
People talk about the lonely life of the football manager. That quote just about sums it up.
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The Best Looking Radio Stations In The World?
Diary reader, Scott McFarlane, has been in Poland and has sent me these photographs of radio stations. He suggests they may be useful if I'm looking for a new job. Clearly he has heard the rumours.
Anyway it's high time we started the search for the world's best-looking radio stations. Surely one of these three is a contender?
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Making An Exit
I arrived in London this morning for what was shaping up to be yet another 鈥渉istoric day鈥 for the 大象传媒. Michael Grade had quit as Chairman of the Board of Governors and the had reported that my bosses were 鈥渋ncandescent with rage鈥.That should save us some money on the 鈥榣eccy bills, I thought, as I walked through the doors of the Media Centre in White City. I was fully expecting to see people slapping hysterical colleagues across the face and senior managers throwing themselves from the mezzanine. After all, other newspapers had reported that the 大象传媒 was in chaos.
Alas no. It all seemed remarkably calm. No one seemed to have lost their nerve, although a few people were having trouble shaking the chocolate sprinkles on to their cappuccino froth. This was being hushed up, of course, and the official line from the 大象传媒 was that there had been 鈥渁 few raised eyebrows 鈥渁t the timing of the chairman鈥檚 departure. I hurried to a mirror to practise raising my own eyebrows in case that would be required at subsequent meetings. Luckily I鈥檝e watched enough Roger Moore Bond-movies in my lifetime so I had mastered this in a matter of minutes.
Then, walking towards the lifts, I ran into the Director General, Mark Thompson. I almost literally ran into him. Only a split-second body swerve on his part prevented a career-wrecking collision. Then he was off down a corridor looking calm and serene before I could think of an obsequious remark. Curses.
Of course now鈥welve hours later鈥y lightning-fast mind has come up with something I ought to have said. I should have paraphrased that famous exchange between Mrs Merton and Debbie McGee. Remember the one where she asked Debbie: 鈥渘ow tell me, why did you decide to marry the millionaire Paul Daniels?鈥
Only my question to the D.G. would have been:
鈥淪o why did the chairman decide to leave the 大象传媒 and join ITV for an three million pound deal?鈥
Then I鈥檇 have raised an eyebrow and strolled off for a cappuccino. Shaken, not stirred. Sorry, I mean stirred, not shaken. No, hang on鈥 oh just forget it.
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Who Else Loves An Election?
I might be unfashionable to say so, but I'm really looking forward to next year's elections for the Scottish Parliament. I don't hold with the view that "politics is boring" and that we should pretend the whole thing isn't happening. And I strongly disagree with Billy Connoly's oft-stated belief: "don't vote...it only encouages them!"
Here at the 大象传媒, however, we've already started planning for next year's event and there are various brainstorming groups gathering in small rooms to discuss how we cover the campaign and the drama of the count. I've already ruled out a three dimensional computer graphics package for our radio coverage. That would just be showing-off.
Now, I'm sort the of bloke who , on election night, will gladly sit glued to the radio, television and computer screen...following every declaration. But I know I may be in the minority.
So, if you have any suggestions on how we approach next year's vote, please let us know.
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Northern Ireland Week
I woke up to Mark Stephen on Out of Doors this morning just as he was linking up with 大象传媒 Radio Ulster's Your Place And Mine programme. I could be wrong, but I'm sure I heard him mock the Belfast presenter for the way they actually prounounce "Northern Ireland". Our plans for a week of joint programming could have ended there and then had we not quickly discovered that we share a similar sense of humour.
This themed week of programmes - leading up to Saint Andrew's Day - came at the suggestion of my colleagues over the water and, in particular one very taltened and persistent programme-maker called Declan McGovern. He's spent months talking to our producers and deciding which programmes should work in partnership.
大象传媒 Radio Ulster listeners will hear these seven days described as 'Scotland Week' while we're calling it 'Northern Ireland' week. When I was talking about this at the staff meeting in Edinburgh last week, someone said it was "just like the Vietnam war". I was baffled until it was explained that the Americans called that conflict the Vietnam War, while their enemies described it as The American War.
"Ah yes, " I said, as the penny dropped, "yes, this is exactly like that. Except this will all be over much more quickly."
"Hmmm, " said another producer, "that's what the Americans thought too. But they got bogged down there for years."
Sometimes you can stretch an analogy just too far.
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This Is What We Do
Walking along a rain-swept street in Glasgow yesterday afternoon, I spotted a girl with a microphone standing in a shop doorway. I can only derscribe her appearance as 'drookit'. I was going to sweep past her with that grim, distracted expression that I perfected for those tabard-clad youngsters with clipboards. You know, those teenagers who try to persaude you to sign over the deeds of your house to a charity. Then I realised that the soggy spectre in front of me was one of our own researchers. It was Becca Smith, in fact, who I encountered only a few days ago at the recording of Let's Do The Show Right Here in Milngavie.
"Soundbiters this time, " she explained, cheerfully and damply, "I'm recording a vox pop for one of the rounds in the quiz."
I nodded sympathetically. The dreaded vox pop! How many times in my career have I been sent in to the streets to guage public opinion in this most unscientific and journalistically bankrupt style? As a young radio reporter the instruction to "get your coat on and go ask people what they think" usually came because there was no other way of illustrating a story - no one else was prepared to speak.
I remember once being sent out to Clydebank shopping centre to find out what people thought of the Royal Family. This, I think, was on the day that Sarah Ferguson was all over the newspapers because she'd been photographed having her by a close friend (as you do). With no Royal-watchers or toe specialists available in time for the lunchtime news bulletin, I was sent to ask Clydebank shoppers for their views.
Eventually I found myself wandering by the canal where a trio of red-nosed wine connoisseurs where taking turns to sample a fresh new vintage in exactly the way that doesn't. So what did they think of the Royal Family?
"Chop all their heads off, " was the collective view and this was followed by detailed suggestion on what should be done with the left-over body parts. This formed part of the piece that I eventually put on air. It was, I reasoned, an authentic point of view from members of the public. I had a duty to include it.
Until, that is, others members of the public started calling in to complain.
Of course most of them were sober.
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Trevor Dann The Radio Man
On Tuesday night I gathered with my colleagues from the Radio Academy (Scotland Branch) to welcome . He's the Academy's new boss and had come north to encourage us to continue the good fight to promote radio and encourage new members to join the academy.
Truth be told, we had been on the verge of dis-banding the Scottish branch because many of us felt that we were geting little support from H.Q. in London and that we might as well form our own breakaway organisation. (Please do not ready any political message into that last sentence!).
But Trevor - a radio man through and through - brought us back from the brink. He painted a grim picture of the problems that had beset the Academy in recent years and convinced us that the neglect we'd experienced was not peculiar to Scotland. By the end of his speil he was getting a round of applause and offers of continued support from radio stations around the country.
What a persuader!
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Colin Tells It Like It Is
It was standing-room only at our staff meeting in Glasgow yesterday as a man from commercial radio came in to tell us where we were going wrong...and right.
Colin Paterson was, until a couple of weeks ago, the man in charge of the Edinburgh radio station Talk 107. When I heard that he was now "available" I asked him if he would talk to our programme-makers and give us his views on 大象传媒 Radio Scotland from the other side of the fence.
"don't pull any punches," I told him , "tell us about our strengths and weaknesses."
Colin is not a man to mince his words. His first recommendation was that we should have big signs put up in our offices with the words "Who Cares?" printed on them. He questioned a news agenda that concentrated on events abroad at the expense of happenings in Scotland. He said too many of our programmes sounded like we at the 大象传媒 were having a great time not telling the audience what was in it for them. He praised our evening music programmes but said the music we played in daytime should be more familiar to a mainstream audience.
He said we didn't do enough to remind listeners that 大象传媒 Radio Scotland has exclusive commentary for SPL football games and that we spent too much of our airtime promoting small half-hour documentaries.As he paused for breath some of our producers and researchers got the chance to ask him a few questions. He fielded most of these with great confidence although he did stumble over a query about his knowledge of Gaelic music. Later he admitted to me he was going to make a cheap joke about that, but then rememebered where he was and decided to keep his mouth shut.
It's always good to get this kind of outside perspective on what we do and I'm planning to invite more guest speakers to our staff meetings in future. I had to admire Colin's bravery. Imagine walking into a room full of strangers and telling them things they might not want to hear.
"That's what makes it easy, " Colin told me, "I didn't know any of the people in that room...I had no friends in there that I was going to upset."
"Well," I said, "I've been in my job for two years and I don't have many friends in that room either."
P.S. Sorry about this slightly blurry photograph of Colin. My hands must have been shaking while he was talking!
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Santa's A Scotsman
My friend and former 大象传媒 colleague Richard Melvin is at it again. You may recall that, during the summer, he experienced a few weeks of global fame when he penned Scotland's unofficial World Cup anthem. This despite the fact that Scotland had not actually qualified for the tournament, but the song was dedicated to Trinidad & Tobago striker Jason Scotland.
His - part of a campaign to sell a board game into the festive market -makes the bold claim that Santa Claus is Scottish. The big man's girth and bad eating habits are cited as the evidence for this.
I particularly enjoyed the line: "too many pies, not enough exercise, of course he's one of us."
So no damaging stereotypes there then.
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Mind The Gap
I don't know if your heard the second programme in our series Welcome To Shettleston today, but it's well worth finding on the page. It's presented by street-poet Loki who appears to wander the streets talking to the kind of people who put flesh and bones on those ghastly health statistics about the east end of Glasgow. Loki himself admitted he had a lazy approach to his own health. He would eat "burgers that make me glow in the dark" and believed heart disease was not relevant to him because he was thin.
The people he met in Shettleston spoke about various physical and psychological health problems. One young woman had given up work to look after an ailing parent and had then started to suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder. Another man described how his Father had died when he was fifteen and he had created "a mental block" in his mind to cope with it. His sister had stayed with their Mother, but he'd gone into care until his Grandmother agreed to look after him.
There was something chilling about these experiences being described in such an authentic, matter-of-fact tone. It's an area of the city I know very well and I could imagine every street corner and pub doorway that was mentioned. The Cottage Bar, for instance, was infamous for its proximity to the scene of gangland killings.
The programme had opened and closed with the automated announcement on the train that takes you east from Glasgow's booming city-centre : "the next stop is Shettleston...please mind the gap..."Yes, but which gap?
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Next Year I'm Going To Save The World.
A few listeners have noticed the amount of travelling I do and have written to tell me that my personal carbon footprint is leading to global catastrophe. Thanks. No really, I was sleeping too well anyway. Now I read that some listeners may themselves be adding to the problem by tuning in to the wrong sort of radio. I'm not suggesting that some radio stations pump out more damaging hot air than others (insert cheap joke about rival broadcaster) but that the problem lies with the kind of device you use to tune in. Have a look at from the Media Guardian and you'll see that digital listeners get most of the blame.Listening to the radio is still more environmentally friendly than watching television and both are greener pastimes than, say, rally driving or testing nuclear warheads. Still, there's no room for complacency.
So here's my action plan for the year ahead:
1. Persuade the powers-that-be to invest in a really good video-conferencing system for the new 大象传媒 building in Inverness. It has to be the kind that makes you look thinner and can pick up the pay-per-view sports channels.
2. Sell one of our two family cars and encourage the Zedettes to walk to school, football training, dance-classes etc. I'm prepared to drive to the library to get them books on other fitness activities.
3. Learn to get the most out of that solar panel that they're building on the roof of our new house. It's designed to heat water but I'm sure, with a few tweaks, I could use it to reanimate dead tissue in the style of Frankenstein's monster. "Life, I tell you...LIFE!!!".
4. Stop trying to get one over on those nice men at the recycling depot. Just because I can't be bothered to walk from one skip to another is no reason why I should pretend my boot is loaded with "landfill stuffing". How many trees have to die before I get round to sorting out my cardboard?
5. Avoid air travel and try going to London on the Sleeper train. I'm told you have to share a cabin with a complete stranger. That's how friendships are started. Or, given my snoring, murder trials.
All other suggestions welcome.
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It's Beginning To Feel It's Not Like Christmas
What the heck does have to do with Christmas? We were up at the garden centre this morning and kept coming across all sorts of odd trinkets and decorations including this mains-powered Homer who was singing his own version of Jingle Bells. You may not be familiar with the version that goes "jingle bells, jingle bells polly-wolly doodle all the way" but it certainly caught my ear.
There was also an array of tiny log cabins and when you opened the little hinged doors you saw various Santas caught in compromising positions. Santa in the bathtub was one thing, but Santa on the toilet with trousers at his ankles was quite another.
How many more gawping days until Christmas?
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That's One In The Eye For Pudsey
I was still in Glasgow this morning when Fred MacAulay and Ali Park launched our Children In Need programming. Poor John Beattie had finally surrendered to his sick bed after struggling through the first four days of the week. It was good to hear so many live link-ups around the country including our SoundTown school in Kelso.
In the afternoon Janice Forsyth and Tom Morton teamed for a three hour mix of live music and guests. I was intrigued to hear classicial pianist Lang Lang reveal that he first began bashing the keys of a "cheesy Chinese piano" at the age of two after watching a Tom & Jerry cartoon. By the time he was five years old he was winning major prizes but still regarded "that cat" as his role model.
By this time I was on the road north and running into a snowstorm on the A9.
Then an accident blocked the carriageway at and a slow-moving line of cars finally came to a halt. I sat there for two hours and noticed I wasn't far from Carrbridge and the exact spot where I'd been stuck in a motionless train a few weeks ago. What it is about that place?Still, it was a chance to listen to Vic Galloway and Bryan Burnett continue the Children In Need theme. The the car started to move again. Seven hours after I'd set off from Glasgow I was turning into the driveway at home where two little snowmen had been built to welcome me back. One of them looked like a little one-eyed bear.
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Let's Do The Show Right Now!
I reckon this is my first ever real-time blog. I've just nipped out during the interval of a recording of Let's do the Show Right Here in Milngavie. It's underway in the town hall and I have to tell you the audience are having a ball...some are on their feet and dancing in front of the stage.It's really good to be back in the midst of a live production like this. I was there for the soundchecks and grabbed a quick word with our host Michelle McManus before the curtain went up. It's a different kind of showbusiness from the kind we do in radio studios. And it's all in a good cause.
In my old job as Department Editor I woukld attend every one of these events and would often be recording them on video for posterity. At least it gave me a job to do. I have to admit to feeling like a bit of a spare part tonight, walking around shaking hands with people.
So that's why I've nipped out in the interval to write this blog update. The second half of the show promises to be just as much fun. There's a bit of a nostalgia theme going on, with Marmalade and Middle Of The Road taking to the stage.
Chirpy, chirpy, cheep cheep anyone?
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Eddie Mair Live
In Glasgow today were we having an "audience festival". It's an event that's been touring 大象传媒 centres throughout the U.K and involves the people who makes decisions about programmes answering questions about audiences.
The Controller of 大象传媒 1, Peter Fincham, was in the line-up this morning and there was a special star turn from Bruce Forsyth who was was talking about his experience hosting Strictly Come Dancing.
Then, in the afternoon, I was on stage with my fellow commissioners from news, television, Gaelic and new media with host Eddie Mair quizziing us about value for money, local programming and the future of online services.
One of my first ever jobs at the 大象传媒 was a temporary stint producing the Eddie Mair Live show about a zillion years ago. Clearly Eddie was keen to take revenge on me for some of the awful things I'd put in to his programmes in those days. He teased me about my name and wouldn't let me off the hook as I tried to babble my way through past an awkward question from a viewer who told us she resented paying the 大象传媒 licence fee because all she ever watched was ITV's The X-Factor and the shopping channels.
At one point we were discussing the popularity of on-demand services and I was making the point that few people would want to listen to a news programme that was two hours out of date.
"I dunno, " said Eddie, "two hours sounds pretty fresh to me."
It seems his standards have dropped since he left Scotland.
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Nothing Urgent
I was in the shower this morning and missed a call from the Controller of 大象传媒 Scotland, Ken MacQuarrie. When I called him back he told me that it was "nothing urgent" , that he was sorry to have disturbed me at home and that he would call me when I got to the office.
Of course a "nothing urgent" call from the big boss is not something you can shrug off. It's not the same as "nothing important" or "nothing at all". So I was left to imagine all sorts of possibilities. Perhaps he'd finally found out about that incident at last year's Christmas party? Surely not. I'd paid enough people to keep their mouths shut.
As it happens, I wasn't going into the office in Inverness. I was driving down the A9 for an afternoon appointment in Glasgow. I got there just after lunch and who should I see in the corrdior but Ken MacQuarrie. He gave me a puzzled look.
"Weren't you in Inverness when I spoke to you earlier?"
"Yes."
"Did you fly down?"
"No. I have the car today."Then he finally told me why he'd called this morning and, do you know, he was right.
It was nothing urgent.
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Because The Pictures Are Better
Among the crowd I hang out with there's an old saying that radio is superior to television because the pictures are better. This is the kind of nonsense that's designed to maintain our morale when we have our noses pressed against the smoked-glass window of a television production office, watching the beautiful people inside enjoy another "wrap party" .We tend not to have "wrap parties" in radio because, well, the output just keeps on going. Also, radio budgets rarely stretch to post-production catering, unless you count lukewarm tea and a packet of digestive biscuits.
In any case, the radio pictures are only better if you have a good imagination. Some people can turn on the wireless, hear the clip-clop of horses and are instantly transported to a world of highwaymen and princesses. Others can only conjur up the image of a bearded sound-effects man banging his coconut shells together.
So I've been handing out digital cameras and asking producers to take photographs of their work in progress. The snap above, for example, was taken during rehearsals for Free Falling - another new situation comedy heading your way on Saturdays. I've also been asking producers to send me an amusing anecdote to accompany the pictures. Clearly this is another area where tastes differ and the funny story I was sent to accompany this image had to be spiked on the grounds that it was too dull for words. In fact the words staged a mutiny and refused to appear on this page. They have a very strong union.
So here's a challenge for diary readers. Use your imagination and make up your own rib-tickling tale. Oh...and keep it clean please.
See...you're laughing already.
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My Titanic Struggle For The Truth
My daughter suddenly remembered that she had a homework project to finish for school tomorrow. It involved answering questions about The Titanic and, to be fair, she had done most of the work. The final section involved some personal research on the disaster and writing a short essay. Thanks goodness for is all I can say, although I was able to supply a few nuggets of Titanic trivia myself.
I remembered a doom-laden song about the sinking that I'd been taught in school and started singing this around the house, much to the dismay of other family members.
"Oh they built the ship Titanic, to sail the ocean blue
and they thought they had a ship that the water would never go through
But the Lord's almighty hand
knew that ship would never land
It was sad when that great ship went down."Then I retrieved from my memory the story about the grand staircase of the Station Hotel in Inverness. It had, so they say, been the inspiration for the design of the staircase on the Titanic. Mrs Z. simply refused to believe this so I went on the world wide web in search of proof but couldn't find any hard evidence. I mean there was enough to cut and paste a , but nothing that would get beyond my wife's threshold of gullibility. So I had no option but to bundle Zed-daughter into the car and drive down to the hotel itself.
It's now called the and a nice young man at the reception desk was very understanding when I explained my plight. He even let me manoeuvre around armchairs full of elderly residents while we took some photographs and then gave me a lovely colour brochure which contained the vital information about the staircase and its link with the Titanic.
We rushed home so I could confront Mrs Z with the evidence, but she simply smiled and nodded. No humbling apology was offered.
All of which left me with a strange sinking feeling.
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Don't Forget To Blog
I include this post simply to highlight that when all good bloggers should attempt to blog at least once a day. Good to see my fellow blogger is doing that very thing
There...that's my duty done.
And my extra blog recommendation today is from the creator of Dilbert.
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Why I Wear A Poppy
So about Channel 4 newsreader, Jon Snow, refusing to wear a poppy on the telly disturbs me for one reason only. Apparently he describes the peer-pressure for him to wear the little paper flower as "poppy fascism".
I think he should have the right to do as he pleases...but "fascism"?
I know why I wear a poppy. I have a Father who fought in the second world war and his birthday always falls on or around Remembrance Sunday. He's 86 on Monday. He served with the Polish Free Navy on a battleship that was part of the North Atlantic Convoys.
But before that, as a teenager, he had been captured by the Russians who had partitioned Poland as part of the pact with Nazi Germany. He spent more than a year in a Siberian concentration camp. He survived, of course, but many of his friends and fellow countrymen did not.
That was a real experience of fascism.
So now we're free to choose whether to wear a poppy or not. Thankfully no one forces us to wear a swastika either.
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My Secret Identity
Diary reader Shona Ferguson has e-mailed me this photograph and, I'm happy to say, has not included any blackmail demands. I was shocked to be 'outed' like this, but the truth is I have been known to wear Superman pyjamas under my shirt.
Actually, if you you'll see that Shona was responding to my discovery of a party that's taking place in a Perth train station phone box on the 2nd of December.
She suggests we all come in fancy dress. Can anyone lend her a Lois Lane costume?
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Next Year's News
A few months ago I asked listeners to tell me what programmes they would like to hear on 大象传媒 Radio Scotland. The response was terrific and the notion of actually asking the audience for their views was deemed unusual enough to be newsworthy, according to my colleagues in the media. That says something in itself.
So we've been considering all those suggestions and matching them against the programme offers we received from different departments and independent production companies.
One big theme was the call for more news/debate style programmes and so we're hoping that Lesley Riddoch will provide that very thing. There was also a call for more investigative journalism. That's why I was so happy when our monthly Investigation series recently won a major U.K award. We'll be doing more with that series in the coming year and developing our Action Scotland format to reflect more in-depth stories from communities across Scotland.
I was really pleased there was such as demand for history and biography. We've been developing plans to provide a regular place in the schedule for this kind of programming, supported, we hope, by a broandband portal that could allow listeners access to the archive of programmes we've made about Scotland's history.
We'll also have regular drama on 大象传媒 Radio Scotland. We want to launch a 'play of the month' slot for straight drama and that will be augmented with lots more comedy/drama and situation comedy. It seems many listeners think we do too many sketch shows.
Our big project for next year will be Scotland's Music 07. John Purser will return to the airwaves with a 52 part series telling the history of Scotland's music and this will be supported by dozens of live events and live music sessions across the country.
This is just for starters - we also have a brilliant line-up of features, documentaries and conversation formats - and I'll be giving you lots more detail in the months ahead.
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Taxi To Inverness
Apparently fine train companies if services don't run to time. That may explain why I spent a miserable two hours squeezed into middle back seat of a taxi as it ferried four of us would-be train passengers the 110 miles from Perth to Inverness.
The slow-running train from Glasgow had arrived at Perth ten minutes after it was meant to connect with the service to Inverness, but seemingly its cheaper for the company to send passengers north by taxi than incur the financial penalty that would have been imposed on them if they had delayed the departure of the connecting service.
I sat semi-folded in the back seat beside a young Mum who was trying to get home to Elgin in time to see her children before bedtime. On my left was a businessman who just plugged himself into his iPod and said nothing for the entire journey. The front seat passsenger immediately found that he and the taxi driver shared a common interest in railway engineering and motorbike engines.
They managed to talk about these things non-stop for two hours. That must be some kind of a record.
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Slightly Soiled
I took Zed-son to the Inverness-Aberdeen game last night. What joy when our home side scored that goal in the second half and what disappointment when the visitors got that equaliser in that last minute of normal time. I tried to tell my crestfallen nine year old that a share of the points was better than none, but I wasn't even convincing myself. Funny how a simple football game can mess with your emotions like that.
Ironically I was on the first train to Aberdeen this morning for the staff meeting. I thanked Tom Morton for introducing me to YouTube many months ago - long before anyone else was talking about it. Then I welcomed Bryan Burnett back from his holiday. He's been in America running the New York marathon in under four hours. He also showed me a slick pair of headphones he'd bought himself when he was in Manhattan. I tried to look impressed but to my eye they didn't look very different from the set that came with my Fidelity music centre in 1978.
"Very retro," I told him.
I also had a good ideas session with Frieda Morrison. I had suggested she introduce a new feature within the Beechgrove Potting Shed that would be aimed at people who are moving into new-build houses and don't know what to do with their gardens.
"I know what you're up to," she said, "you're moving into that new house in Inverness and you're trying to get some free advice."
"Well yes, " I admitted, "but there must be lots of people in the same boat."
Frieda agreed there was some merit in the idea. She told me that a landscaping company can charge about ten thousand pounds to sort out a new garden, but that people could do it themselves. It's important, she said, to prepare the ground before the builders dump the topsoil on your garden....and it's important to get good quality soil.
Is it worth all the hassle? Apparently a decent garden can instantly add tens of thousands of pounds to the value of a property.
Yikes...I'd better rent a tractor.
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Fit To Burst
Some good news for our marketing team. Our 'bursting with new varieties' campaign just picked up an award at major industry event. It had been shortlised in the awards and won silver for the 'best TV campaign' against stiff competition from many other broadcasters from around the U.K.
It was directed by the wonderfully talented Ruth Palmer who showed the patience of a saint while I annoyed her one afternoon in an editing suite suggesting that the colour of the sky be changed and other petty interferences. The animated sequence was produced by Red Kite.
The idea behind the campaign was to demonstrate the wide range of music available of 大象传媒 Radio Scotland compared to other stations. I was particularly fond of the sequence for The Jazz House in which flowers became trumpets.
I wasn't so sure about the spiders that crawled across the screen for Vic Galloway...still having nightmares about those.
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Going With The Flow
The local news buletin on 大象传媒 Radio Scotland brought rejoicing to one half of the Zed househould this morning. A in and around Inverness had forced the council to close schools for the days. Funny how children just jump out of bed in such situations.
A spokewoman for appeared on air to apologise and explain that "bowsers would be available on many streets"
When I came into the office I asked our news Editor Craig Swann the question that had been haunting me all morning.
"What's a bowser?"
Craig didn't actually give me a straight answer.
"You'll know one when you see it." he told me.
Hmmm.
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Deepest Blue
Last week I was listening to Mark Stephen's programme about North Sea divers -Deepest Blue - and couldn't fathom how he was able to record himself as he went underwater. You can hear the programme on our Listen Again facility for the next few days.
I e-mailed Mark and asked him if he'd managed to take any photographs of his expedition. He sent me this one and warned me that it was not exactly flattering.
I don't know...I think he could give a run for his money in this gear.
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Bonfire Night
Twenty-four hours early, perhaps, but it was a perfect night for a bonfire. I told the Zedettes they had to wear at least three layers of clothing because we would be parking the car almost a mile away from Bught Park. Yet that's the fun of bonfire night isn't it? You get all wrapped up and join the columns of families making their way along the darkened streets. Soon we caught sight of the flashing lights and heard the screams from the funfair . We made our way into the park and edged our way up near the crowd-control barriers to get a better view of the fire. They said ten thousand people were there - it looked like more.
The bonfire had been constructed from dozens of wooden pallets and ignited easily. Soon we were all smarting from the heat against our faces. As the flames died down we joined in the countdown and then the firework display began. The Zedettes watched in silent awe, unlike the little girl standing next to them who was giving her Granny a running commentary.
"That's purple and gold...it's really beautiful isn't it, Granny?"
Her Granny agreed. In fact, we all did.
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Close Encounters
We have a lot of new comedy coming on 大象传媒 Radio Scotland in the next few months, including a special Day of Comedy to brighten the gloom between Christmas and New Year.
Look out for our new sketch show North By North-North, a surreal visit to a Scottish Island with The Clan and, first up, more episodes of the situation comedies we piloted last year.
The photograph above was taken during a recording of Close which is set in a Glasgow tenement. Through the magic of radio , the programme takes us into a seedy world of petty jealousies and back-biting neighbours. It's all suitably squalid.
I'm not sure this photograph of Elaine MacKenzie-Ellis and the rest of the cast conveys that...although the studio does look a bit dark. Looks like someone forgot to feed the meter.
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The Shirt Off My Back
I had a crack of dawn meeting with my boss, Donalda McKinnon and she suggested we go to the 大象传媒 canteen. I had to brief her on our commissioning decisions in advance of sharing our plans more widely next week. It was so cold in Glasgow this morning that I'd pulled on a wooly jumper. Of course, I usually wear a shirt and tie, but but I hadn't expected such a negative reaction to the jumper.
"Now Jeff, "said Donalda, fixing me with the kind of steely gaze that took me right back to those days when I was called into the headmaster's office at school, "tell me this...does your wife dress you in the morning?"
It took a moment for the penny to drop then I realised that I was wearing the jumper outside-in. I quickly took it off, attracting the attention of the canteen staff.Mind you, this isn't the worst thing that has happened to me during a meeting with my superiors. About eight years ago, my then boss Maggie Cunningham invited me out to lunch to discuss my "career plan" . It was a lovely summer's day and we strolled along to the restaurant. I was wearing a crisp blue shirt and tie. No jacket.
No sooner had lunch been served (liver & onions) than I made a bold gesture to emphasise my profound views on broadcasting and brought my hand down on the fork that had been resting on my plate. It catapulted a payload of gravy-coated onions onto my shirt. All attempts to dab it away with my napkin failed so I made a dash for the bathroom and tried to wash the mess away with some water.
Of course, all this did was create a huge dark blue stain on my light blue shirt. That's when I had the bright idea to remove my shirt completely, give it a rinse in the basin and then dry it under the heat of the hand-dryer.
I did manage to get most of the stain washed away, then gave the shirt a good twist to remove the excess water. That's when I discovered there was no hand-dryer on the wall...just one of those metal boxes that dispense paper towels.
I had no alternative but to slither my way back into my dripping shirt and return to the table with my boss. She was kind enough to say nothing. Even when I started to shake and shiver, she said nothing. When a small pool of water collected around my chair, she still said nothing.
But neither did we continue the conversation about my career plan.
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Looks Like We're All Invited
So what are your plans for the 2nd of December? I had to change trains at Perth this afternoon and my eyes were drawn to a phone box on the platform. According to a sign tapes to the door, this "venue" has been booked for a party next month.
I've checked my diary and it looks like I'll be able to make it. In fact, I can make it any day in December...or January.
Note to self: must make more friends.
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- Jeff Zycinski, Head of Radio at 大象传媒 Scotland, on the highs and lows of his work/life balancing act.
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