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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Life's A Beach
I really did plan to join the MacAulay & Co team for the litter pick-up at Ardersier. Really. But then I remembered I had to catch a flight to London to attend the Sony Radio Academy awards.
The plane actually flew over the beach and I'm sure it looked a lot neater.
But nothing could wash away my guilt.
So here are some lovely photographs of the event - courtesy of producer Lindsay Gillies and an from the Press & Journal.
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The Falls, Guys.
Another Sunday, another Zed family outing. This time we headed fifty miles north of Inverness to the Falls of Shin. It lies within the vast owned by Mohamed Al Fayed. He also owns Harrods, of course, and the visitor centre contains an miniature version of the famous Knightsbride store. It all seemed wonderfully anomalous deep in the heart of a Highland forest.
Of course we hadn't driven all this way just to stock up on tins of lemon and oatmeal biscuits of tiny jars of luxury marmalade. No siree. Rather, we'd come to explore the Great Outdoors and trek through one of the many forest trails that have been marked out and colour-coded for bufoons such as us. We chose the red trail, because it looked easiest. One last check to make sure we had brought enough emergency rations (chocolate, crisps, fizzy drinks) and we were off. The trail had a few twists and turns and then, suddenly, we were back in the visitor centre car park.
We'd been walking for exactly ten minutes.
Clearly we had underestimated our collective stamina, so we chose another colour - blue - and followed a slightly longer path that led through a rocky landscape strewn with felled trees and sawn timber and then along the side of the river to the very Falls of Shin themselves. The only moment of drama came when one of the Zedettes moved to brush a black stone from the top of a rock and realised, as it squelched in his hand, that it was a huge black slug.
In the afternoon we were back in the car and stopped off at the Countryside Centre in Lairg. We were the only vistors and were directed towards a darkened, circular room which housed the Woodland Story. This was one of those audio-visual experiences where different panels within the room are suddenly illuminated to reveal three-dimensional cardboard displays, while a dis-embodied voice tells the story of Highland forestry.
I'm afraid I was a bit disruptive and while the Zedettes were transfixed by one of the lit panels, I sneaked into a darkened area behind me. Then, as the spotlights revealed my whereabouts I gave a fair impersonation of a grizzly bear being awoken from his woodland slumber.
I didn't know children could jump that high!
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They're Going To Skin Me Alive
Tomorrow is a big day for the 大象传媒 Radio Scotland website. By lunchtime we should have unveiled the new look and we hope you'll find it easier to navigate your way around the different bits of content.
I've been told, however, that I shouldn't try to update this diary tomorrow morning because they have to move it from one server to another. In fact I got a visit from our New Media producer Carol Duncan today and she told me that I was going to be "reskinned".
This is timely because I can barely fit into my existing skin and I'm sure a new skin would make me look thinner.
Alas, no. It's all about the frames that sit around different parts of the website. This diary is to get a new one.
That means I ought to go back to my gym which I've been boycotting because it is owned by Duncan Bannantyne. He was quoted this week as saying that fat people are lazy and you should think twice if you were going to employ people like that.
Charming. I might never waddle through the doors of his establishment again.
At least, not until they grease the door-frame.
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Will You Vote With Your Ears?
Over the past few days I've been trying to resolve a tricky scheduling problem. This coming Sunday, 大象传媒 TV viewers in Scotland will get the chance to see the four main party leaders in debate in front of a live audience in Aberdeen. At the same time you'll be able to hear that debate on 大象传媒 Radio Scotland.
The tricky scheduling problem concerned the timing of the TV programme. It starts at 2215, which means we've had to change our Sunday evening radio schedule and provide a short scene-setter programme before the event. Not a major problem, but I thought I'd share it with you.
But this whole simulcast reminded me of one of the first famous political debates to be televised. In 1960, Richard Nixon squared up to John F. Kennedy in front of 70 million television viewers in the U.S. Legend has it that Nixon was recovering from a knee injury, had lost weight, looked sick and refused make-up because it wasn't manly. He was also wearing a grey suit on black & white television and almost blended into the background.
Kennedy, on the other hand, was dressed in black, looking tanned, fit and bursting with energy. Viewers decided that Kennedy won the debate.
People listening to the radio, however, took the opposite view. All they had to go on were the voices, words and arguments of the two Presidential candidates.
Now, this is the stuff of , but it all seems a wee bit too simple to be true. Who were these people listening to the radio, for example? Why did they not have access to television? Was that because of their geographic location or their economic status? And did any of those factors mean that they were more likely to declare the Republican candidate the victor?
Well, I don't know...but this coming Sunday night you can experiment for yourself. Watch the debate on television, but have a radio switched on in the kitchen. Every time you get up to fill the kettle you can compare what you've heard with what you've seen.
Either that or watch the whole thing wearing a blindfold. Just don't let the neighbours see you. That's how gossip starts.
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Name The Face In The Mirror
I've been stung by a series of e-mails suggesting there is not enough fun on this blog and, since the recent shower radio debacle, not enough opportunities to win prizes.
Well, worry not...I'm sorting out the shower radios as we speak.
Meanwhile there is a smashing 大象传媒 Radio Scotland pen to be won if you can name the face in the mirror in the above photograph. She is, of course, a 大象传媒 Radio Scotland presenter but that's the only clue I'm giving you.
The first three correct answers posted on this site qualify for the prize, but only if you subsequently get in touch with your contact details.
Good luck and don't say I don't know how to have fun!
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Sound And Vision...
...but not necessarily together. You see, I've been raiding the 大象传媒 Radio Scotland video archive (a big box on the shelf behind me) to populate our associated site. It included a little presentation from Gareth Hydes, talking about the station's work with schools and communities. He's now moved on to become a supremo with Children In Need.
Anyway, all was going well until last week, when I realised the sound and vision on some of those wee films were not linked as they should be.
So I spent the weekend trawling the internet for advice on hot to solve this problem. It's all to do with transcoding, apparently, but i still haven't come up with any answers.
So if there are any You Tubers out there who can give me a crash course on this issue then please get in touch.
Meanwhile... have been added today.
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Get Rich Quick
The new series of Fortune Tellers on 大象传媒 Radio Scotland prompts me to point you in the direction of a money-making scheme. My recently posted a blog about disc-golf. Having never heard of this before, I was intrigued and asked her for more information.
She tells me:
Frisbee golf is like regular golf, except you play with frisbees (typically with special disc golf discs and not, like, ultimate frisbee discs or the normal kind you throw at the dog). There's a tee (typically a long, concrete space for an approach and launch) and the hole is really a basket you're trying to make your frisbee land in. The holes have a par usually clearly marked at the tee. The discs come in all varieties - long range driver, mid range driver, approach and putt, etc. (Typically a hole is 400-600 feet from tee to hole)
Basically, you walk around a park throwing a frisbee at a metal basket.
( It's really entertaining. Some people get very complicated about it, but basically you walk around a park throwing a frisbee at a basket. I got into it somewhere along the way in college. We had an eighteen hole course on campus and I hung out with some serious Ultimate Frisbee enthusiasts, so disc golf seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do for fun.She adds:
The says y'all have three courses in the entire country. You probably could make a fortune. Because I hear regular golf is popular there.
You know, she's right. Not only does this appeal to Scotland's love of golf, but it appears to require minimal equipment and skill. I'm going to mention this to our sports department. Maybe we can even get a charity tournament going for this year's Children In Need appeal.
Anyone for disc golf?
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The Big Switch
Ten minutes before we went on air, Tony Currie tempted fate by telling me stories about other big media launches that had gone belly-up. There was the announcer who forgot the name of his own radio station and the television studio where all the cameras started crashing into each other.
鈥淪till,鈥 said Tony, 鈥淚鈥檓 sure this will work.鈥 He then pressed a button and the desk in front of him began to sink towards the floor. So did my jaw. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 meant to happen,鈥 he explained, 鈥渋t鈥檚 adjustable.鈥
It was well past my bedtime鈥en minutes to one, in fact, and we were sitting in one of the brand new . At the top of the hour, the announcer in Queen Margaret Drive would flick a switch and, fingers crossed, 大象传媒 Radio Scotland would be broadcasting from our new home in Glasgow.
Tony had re-jigged the opening of his regular Nightshift programme to include a short interview with me so that I could say something profound about the future of broadcasting. I was determined to come out with words that would stand the test of time and not just blether on about all the lights and buttons I could see around me.
What had been conceived as a week of low-key test broadcasts was now taking on the proportions of an epic event. Since midnight a steady stream of producers and technicians had been arriving in the production office outside the studio. They had come equipped with cakes and biscuits and most were planning to stick around until dawn. A film crew arrived and then the Controller of 大象传媒 Scotland, Ken MacQuarrie.
Amazing what a box of biscuits will do.
And so, at exactly one o鈥檆lock on the morning of Tuesday 17th April 2007, we were 鈥渓ive from Pacific Quay鈥.
Tony turned to me and asked for my thoughts on this historic day.
鈥淭here are some amazing buttons around here,鈥 I said.
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First Glimpse Inside Pacific Quay
Well I now, officially, have my desk at Pacific Quay - the 大象传媒's new Scottish headquarters on the banks of the Clyde. It's where I'll be every Wednesday from now on.
A few dozen of us moved in this morning and were given a guided tour by a very lively Australian woman . I must find out who she was. She'd be a natural for radio.
As promised, I've posted on this blog's associated You Tube page, so go and have a look and tell me what you think.
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Hands Up For Democracy
Take a good look at the faces in the photograph because you might just be looking at some of tomorrow's top media stars.
They're all students drawn from colleges and universities as far apart as and . They'll be out and about across Scotland on election day, recording material for a special documentary that will be broadcast on 大象传媒 Radio Scotland a week after the vote.
It should provide a snapshot of Scotland on the big day and our student reporters will be covering all angles. We'll follow a parliemnatary candidate all the way from breakfast to the declaration....we'll hear from party workers, polling station police officers and from those whose job it is to cover the election for radio, TV and newspapers.
The students spent today at Queen Margaret Drive in Glasgow as our production team (Stephen Hollywood, Karen MacKenzie , Karen Falconer and Lucy Adam briefed them on their various missions. I was invited to say a few words and field some questions about careers in radio.
I resisted the temptation to recite my usual eight-hour autobiography, but told them that any practical experience would give them a clear advatange when they went to look for jobs.
To that extent I was astonished to discover that ten students from one particular insitution failed to appear today. A pity because we had been turning away others just to keep the numbers under control.
Still, those who did turn up seemed very switched on and an interesting question came from Zab Mustefa, who asked whether a person interested in a career in, say, radio, should bother doing a stint in, say, newspapers. I told her that any practical experience was valaubale, especially in an age where multi-media skills are required.
"Soon, " I said, "you'll need to be able to find stories, write them, record and edit audio and video, take photographs and get them all of that up on a website before the competition beats you to it."
And to prove the point, I produced my little camera and explained that she would now be featuring on the 大象传媒 Radio Scotland website.
And so she is.
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Acting Up
Someone once said that life is not a dress rehearsal but, hey, wouldn't it be great if it was? Or just those key moments that went horribly wrong. Imagine those toe-curling episodes were just rehearsals and you got the chance to put in a better performance when it came to the real thing. You know, those events you still think about in the still of the night and then spring out of bed screaming "Nooooooooooooooooo!!!!!".
Or is that just me?
I hope not because this is premise of Larry Sullivan's new series, Acting Up. Larry has recruited a crack team of young actors from the and each week they use role-play techniques to work with one person who needs help with a little bit of their life. In the first programme, for example, a Highland businessman got some advice on how to network at big gatherings of potential customers. He didn't quite know how to make an entrance when small clusters of colleagues were chatting in groups and he had a tendency to lurk behind people hoping they would notice him. Females in the group found this very unsettling.
Gosh, if only I'd been able to call on the services of those actors through most of my teenage years and early twenties. I would never have asked girls out on dates while eating fried chicken from a tub. I might not have flunked all those job interviews by turning up in a balaclava. And I just might have persuaded the bank manager to support my years-ahead-of-its-time idea for a new waste recycling business.
If only I hadn't called it 'Junkies'.
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Let's Be Grown-Up About This
I have this theory about the kitchen bin that annoys the heck out of my wife. My theory is that, no matter how full the bin appears to be, there鈥檚 always room for one more bit of rubbish. Always. Therefore, if you follow my logic, there is never any need to go to the bother of emptying said bin with all the associated hassle of replacing the interior bag and taking the old one to the outside wheely-bin.
Mrs Z., as you can imagine, has her own views on this theory but for reasons of taste and decency they need not detain us here.
Of course this is the same woman who believes it is socially acceptable to hum three notes over and over again for hours on end even though it is clearly driving others to distraction. Previous attempts to dissuade her from this habit have always ended in retaliation and recrimination along the lines of:
鈥淲ell we all have to put up with your so-called singing!鈥
It鈥檚 the 鈥渟o-called鈥 in that sentence that really hurts. I consider my vocal talents to be on a par with Sinatra or Pavarotti. Especially in the shower. And in my own head.
Anyway, while we鈥檙e trading insults, can I just point out that Mrs Z. thinks it鈥檚 OK to leave the butter out of the fridge for five minutes when any rational person could tell you that this kind of shoddy practise led to the outbreak of plague in Europe during the middle-ages. Or was that because people left their rats out of the fridge? I can never remember.
And don鈥檛 get me started on what she does in the car when I鈥檓 driving and listening to the radio. The slightest little incident causes her to emit a loud gasp and clutch the dashboard. Fair enough, we do disagree on what constitutes a 鈥渓ittle incident鈥. I think going the wrong way through a roundabout is the kind of thing that just happens when you鈥檙e absorbed in a particularly good radio programme. It鈥檚 not necessarily the kind of blunder that 鈥渃ould get us all killed鈥.
Leaning on the ironing board while you wait for the iron to heat up. Now that鈥檚 really dangerous鈥s I continue to point out. Not that my warnings are heeded. Instead I鈥檓 handed a crumpled shirt and told to get on with it.
I suppose a marriage built on sound foundations survives despite these petty annoyances. As grown-ups we have to rise above childish bickering.
Love, after all, means never having to say you鈥檙e sorry. Or, at least, never having to be the first to say it.
Because I said it first last time. Yes I did. Did, did, did, did.
Did infinity.
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Politicians Bite For Lunch
I strolled into downtown Inverness at lunchtime to watch the Scotland Live outside broadcast from Falcon Square outside the Eastgate shopping centre. Shereen Nanjiani and the team had gathered five parliamentary candidates to debate a range of issues including transport and health.
As I took my place in the crowd of onlookers a man next to me gave me the once-over and proclaimed:
"I know who you are...you're Charlie Wheelan aren't you?"
I denied this because, well, I'm not. But I could tell the man didn't believe me. In his mind he had developed a logical explanation for a former Downing Street spin doctor to be lurking in the crowd at a 大象传媒 outside broadcast.
Anyway, things soon became lively when a man from the crowd asked Labour's Peter Peacock why there aren't enough NHS dentists in Inverness. The man found himself being applauded by the crowd. Another woman claimed that she had to travel to Prestwick to get an NHS dentist.
As the discussion paused for the one o'clock news I had a brief chat with the Conservartive's Mary Scanlon who told me that, funnily enough, she'd paid an emergency visit to her own dentist that very morning. Apparently she has a loose front tooth and had begged her dentist to sort it so that it stays in her mouth until after election day.
Then I introduded myself to Fergus Ewing from the SNP who seemed very worried about the dwindling autonomy of Scottish media organisations and told me that if I wanted to persuade him that wasn't the case then he would "need a lot of persuading."
At that point Mary Scanlon dragged him off for a cup of coffee so I wandered over to the audio truck and spoke to our engineer Ken Garden who kindly produced a big bag of local fudge and offered me a chunk of it.
That's when I should have made an oh-so-smart remark about politicians and fudge being in such close proximity.
But I didn't.
I've only just thought of that.
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Picture This
For many who work in radio, the invisibility of the medium can be a great comfort. Long gone are the days when 大象传媒 radio announcers arrived in the studio dressed in dinner jackets and black ties. To be fair, I have seen some radio presenters arrive for work with their dinner on their jackets, but that's another story. All I'm saying is that some of the people you hear on the radio are hard to look at. So hard, in fact, that many of them get kicked off the airwaves and are given jobs in management.But I'm not bitter.
What troubles me, though, are the implications of "convergence" and "multi-media, cross-platform projects". It's no longer good enough that we make radio programmes you can listen to on a grease-stained kitchen tranny. Oh no, now we have to think about the possibility of providing photographs, graphics, text and video for the next wave of digital receivers. That's all very well, but it means you might have to look at pictures of the people speaking on the radio. Oh yes. Just think it through.
Frankly it's all your fault. Yes, you there in front of the computer screen. The very fact that you've come this far into the 大象传媒 website tells me everything I need to know about you. Face it, you're just not satisfied with voices and music and the odd burst of static. You want something more from us. You're so needy!
So I've given in to your demands and have opened a YouTube account to provide little video insights into our madcap world of audio manipulation. It currently contains only . One has some archive footage from our fund-raising series Let's do the Show Right Here. The other is my three-minute walk through our HQ at Queen Margaret Drive in Glasgow. Just a few days before I get my new desk at Pacific Quay, I thought it was a timely little tribute to our past.
Hopefully, in future, I'll be able to add some more video adventures to help illustrate some of the things I mention in this diary.
Let me know if you want more.
Or not.
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Beeb Man Says Vote For...
I've just come from the Glasgow newsroom talking to the Editor of Good Morning Scotland about his nervous rash. He claims - in his weekly newsletter - that this has been brought on by the Scottish election campaign. I actually thought he was joking about this, but, sure enough, he has a pluke on his forehead about the size of Vesuvius. It made me feel guilty for laughing at his newsletter so I quickly changed the subject.
"What about the Press?" I asked, "which newspapers will come out and declare open support for particular parties?"
There ensued a short discussion on how much influence newspapers actually have on voter intentions. Apparently, during the Thatcher years, most readers of The Sun newspaper had no idea it supported the Conservative Party. These days, with the declining sales of newspapers that you actually have to pay for, I wondered if freesheets such as The Metro would swing the balance if it backed any party in favour of longer journey times on trains and buses, so that readers would have more time to read their paper.
Of course here at the 大象传媒 we're happy to be bound by editorial policies that prevent us from showing bias towards a particular political party. Cynics may sneer at that notion. It's a bit like those people who believe everyone in the media supports Rangers or Celtic and only pretend to be fans of other football clubs.
The truth is, if you work for the 大象传媒 long enough, you become institutionally incapable of expressing a personal opinion on anything that matters. This can cause problems. In a restaurant, for example, someone is bound to ask if you prefer red or white wine. Normal people express an immediate preference, but the 大象传媒 person hesitates...
"Well, of course, there's bound to be merit in either wine...and there's a case to be made for rose...or even having nothing at all. Let's find out what everyone else thinks..."
You think I'm joking? Well, maybe, but this election campaign is causing me all sorts of diffciluties at home as my children ask me who people ought to vote for. Not that they'll be able to make their mark on the ballot for another eight years, but, in any case, I tell them that everyone has to make their own choices. At the last election my offspring made that choice on the basis of their favourite colour...now they're just too sophisticated for that. They demand answers.
Finally, in a pragmatic twist, and realising that their toy and sweets money comes from my 大象传媒 salary, they asked me which party "liked the 大象传媒".
Gosh, they might have to spoil their ballot papers.
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Steam Train To Aberdeen
Tonight's train from Glasgow to Aberdeen was like a Turkish bath but without the naked people wrapped in towels. By the time I stumbled along the platform I was aware that my clothes were sticking to me the way a wrapper sticks to an ice lolly in a darkened cinema. I must have looked like a midden and it's exactly
at these kind of times when you don't want to meet anyone you know."Hello Jeff."
I turned and saw Bryan Burnett. He was just about to get on the train that I had climbed off. He reminded me that he had taken a day off and that Laura McCrum would be presenting Get It On tomorrow night. Of course, being the Head of Radio, I shouldn't have needed reminding. I'm supposed to have all these facts at my fingertips having memorised the next six weeks of the Radio Times.
"Pity I'm not in Aberdeen tonight, " said Bryan, "I could have taken you out on the town and shown you the sights."
Yes, a pity. I was just in the mood for a few night clubs. Or was it a hot bath, cocoa and an early bedtime?
These days, I can never decide.
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Blogs, Pods And Mad Cows
In Glasgow this morning to join a gathering of 大象传媒 colleagues from across the U.K as we talked about the way ahead for podcasting and blogs. I'd almost forgotten that this blog was included in the trial project which launched over a year ago. Will it survive? We wont know until May.
Today, 大象传媒 Scotland's head of New Media, Julie Adair, introduced us to Ian Myatt and Will Roffey who took us through the information gleaned from the 大象传媒's podcasting trial. Content producers from England, Wales and Northern Ireland chimed in with their own experiences of what had or had not worked.
We heard samples of podcasts from English regions. One included an investigation into a tunnel that is supposed to run from Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle. A weekly news podcast for Rugby led with a quite harrowing story of a bloody-nosed cow running amok on a railway line.
Then Julie herself talked about 大象传媒 Scotland's Island Blogging project and introduced John Beattie who gave a passionate and entertaining account of his experience writing for the Six Nations Blog.
I was asked to speak briefly about this blog and the perceived difficulties of 大象传媒 managers actually revealing any information to the public! I was then asked if I would be writing about the meeting in my blog today.
What could I say?
Next thing I know, Julie had organised a group photograph. Talk about peer pressure!
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The Thigh's The Limit
On Friday the MacAulay & Co programme came live from our studio at Kelso High School. Fred was joined by Michelle McManus as they judged a school version of Fame Academy entitled Lame Academy. The photographs have just reached me.
Of course, both Michelle and Fred now have ample experience of these kind of talent shows, but, listening in my office, I almost choked on my morning cuppa when Fred gave his verdict on a particular teacher's performance in front of pupils.
"Points must be deducted, " said Fred, "because you were flashing a bit of thigh to some third year boys."
Now that's something you don't hear from the likes of Simon Cowell or Richard Park.You can understand why Michelle is giving Fred this funny look.
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The Birth Of Britain
Fancy a spot of time travel? The let me recommend you listen to on our Listen Again site and you can travel back 300 years to the events leading up to the union of the English and Scottish parliaments.
The drama-documentary, written by George Rosie and produced in Edinburgh by Dave Batchelor, was transmitted simultaneously today on 大象传媒 Radio Scotland and 大象传媒 Radio 4. It's part of a season of programmes to mark the historic events and consequences of 1707.
大象传媒 Radio 4 have also taken a more light-hearted look at Scotland and England with a programme that examines the the different styles of comedy north and south of the border. It features contributions from Elaine C. Smith and Johnny Beattie.
I think Johnny hit the nail of the head when he reamrked that much of the English comedy we now see on television has its origins in university clubs such as the Cambridge Footlights, while Scottish comedy originated in the shipyards.
But the great thing is - you're allowed to like both.
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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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