We few — we happy few…
Midweek is a radio show — but it’s also a university course (two, in fact) for senior students in the bachelor and master of journalism programs at Carleton University. Usually those students form a Midweek production team of about 18 to 21 students, but this year, for all sorts of good reason, we had 23 in the fall season and now have just 12 in this winter’s season.
A dozen folks is plenty, though … unless…
And yes, that “unless” arrived with a ka-boom for this season’s opening show: Our show usually goes to air live, nimbly operated by the skilled and experienced fingers of our audio technologist at the production board … but this week, for the first time ever, he was off sick. Two other team members also couldn’t make it … and CKCU-FM still had a one-hour space in its schedule it was counting on us to fill.
So we did: Show producer Zoe Miller lined up the show, using stories brought in for this week and some “baggers” we’d built up as our reserve, audio producer Anne-Marie Iemmolo made sure all the items met our sound standards, copy editors Cate Newman and Emily Vaz readied the scripts for hosts Mac Linke and Reanna Julien to record…
A multi-track mix like the one we used for this Midweek show. The hosts’ voices were on one track, the theme and other music on another, and the stories the hosts introduced were on others too — and believe us, it’s not as easy as that sounds! (By the way, the example in this photo is actually the mix for the sea shanty documentary that ended this show.)
…and then everyone else worked to assemble all these bits and pieces into a show, using the same multi-track audio mixing program we use to assemble our much shorter documentaries.
it was a race — remember, this was our new team’s first show, and these multi-track skills are new for some and rusty for others — but we got it all pieced together with minutes to spare, just in time for stand-in operator Randy Bowler to send it down the line to CKCU’s control room, right after the BBC News at noon.
And a great first show it was, too: Reporter Sember Wood opened by introducing us to a security guard at the Rideau Centre mall for whom drug overdoses among the houseless are a several-times-a-day reality, and we heard how he tries to keep himself emotionally well while dealing with the pain of others.
Mack Linke, one of today’s hosts, took us to an indoor skateboard space at Lansdowne Park where enthusiasts are able to enjoy their sport away from winter’s perils, and Devon Tredinnick spoke with Mariam Salad, a mental health professional working with racialized youth, about what she sees in her work as we enter Black History Month.
Then Midweek’s Gail Pope showed us what’s new at the Future Learning Lab on the fourth floor of the library at Carleton University that’s designed to encourage collaboration and the use of the latest learning technology, followed by reporter Lauren Roulston taking us to a very different lab: the “Disco Lab” at Ottawa’s Parlour restaurant where a new generation are making sure disco-era hits are stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive…
The Sock ‘n’ Buskin theatre company is also stayin’ alive by staging George Brant’s play Elephant’s Graveyard, and Midweek’s Annie Doane spoke with director Andrea Makris about the production. Gail Pope returned to take us off to the Art House Café’s first open mic night of the new year, and then Annie Doane was back with a documentary co-produced by Anne-Marie Iemmolo about the Carleton cheer team’s startling success at a recent international competition.
Whether that team would have much to cheer about at the upcoming Capital Hoops Classic against cross-town rival Ottawa U was an open question as we went to air, so Midweek’s Reanna Julien, the other host this week, put that question to Micheal Sun, a journalist specializing in university sports.
“Dry January” seems to be increasingly a thing, and it seems so are mocktails, even after January is over and done. Midweek’s Mack Linke went to a local event to learn more about nonalcoholic drinks that aspire to be anything but boring.
On the other hand, even a few too many mocktails are unlikely to get you breaking out into a raucous sea shanty, so reporters Sember Wood and Emily Vaz went on down to the Beyond the Pale Brewing Company to find out what fuels the singers of the Bytown Sea Shanty Collective as they gathered for their first choruses of ’23.
So there you go: A wide-ranging, jam-packed show, pulled together in a racing scramble by a tiny team of Midweekers doing their first-ever on-air show. Yes, this little team is just a dozen strong, but judging from this start, it has quite a season ahead:
…though she be but little, she is fierce.