TNR

As a novice to the professional shoot it was an eye-opener for me being able to watch an experienced production team in action as well as trying to help where possible, whenever I wasn’t stumbling around like Bambi on ice.

 The shoot was for the launch of Cadbury’s hunt to find an honorary Cadbury Chocolate Taste Tester at The British Library, featuring ‘The Great Chocolate Mixionary’. The search was launched by asking the public to tweet in the one word they would use to describe the taste of Cadbury’s. These words were then formed into pure chocolate by the Mixionary. Claudia Winkleman kicked off the event with her memoirs of being a chocoholic before bellowing national treasure Brian Blessed emerged booming out the best twitted words to complement the Mixionary’s chocolate describe Cadbury’s chocolate.

Brian Blessed and Claudia Winkleman getting snapped.

As well as interviews with Brian and Claudia we also got to quiz the current Cadbury Chocolate Taster, Dave Shepard, on what it’s like to be a chocolate taster and how we could apply for the role. Dave spoke of his extensive years as a food technician specialising with a variety of foods before specialised in chocolate. My mind pictured a real life Willy Wonka before the distraction of chocolate became to much……

Interviewing David Shepard on his role as chocolate taster.

With the smell of melted chocolate wafting up our noses for the entire shoot we can be let off indulging our urges to acquire some free samples, for the whole TNR team, to scoff. However we may have had eyes bigger than our bellies when we picked up three goody bags crammed full of chocolately goodness to work our way through.

The Chocolate Goody Bag

Why not check out the final edited video.

Post by Andrew Clark, Production Intern @ TNR Communications

Albertina Lloyd, Showbiz & Film journalist for the Press Association

In an interview with Albertina Lloyd, Showbiz & Film journalist for the Press Association, she provides insight into how PR’s could interact with features departments and how video content and the right level of brand integration can make a difference to your story’s coverage.

Hi Albertina, thanks for joining us. Tell us about the PA Entertainment, what you do and how it fits within PA.

I work for the online entertainment service Premier Showbiz, which many people don’t realise is part of PA. We supply a variety of clients and publications with online stories as part of their subscription. We provide a minimum of thirty stories a day and we write them to a specific style, which is quite different compared to the style of stories that go on the newswire. The style of our stories is a bit more gossipy, a bit chattier, than the stories that would appear on the newswire. However, when we have a relevant showbiz news story we also write for the newswire.

We also aim for our stories to have good SEO optimisation so they get high hits on Google for our clients, so we have quite a different style to the wire in that sense as well.

What sort of stories do you cover?

Our stories vary between TV, film, soap stories, music stories and general showbiz gossip. We cover all breaking showbiz gossip-related news in the US and in the UK, so if there is a big story breaking, we will follow it up, make sure it is accurate, check with people’s publicists to see if they have a statement to make and then we write it and put it out on our wire.

How do you get your info on stories?

We have a team of about seven people. We obtain our information from red-carpet events, showbiz parties, interviews & press releases. We also monitor the newswire and the AP newswire. If we come across a story that is relevant to our service, we adapt those stories and put them out on our online service.

What about branded stories?

Branded stories are a bit different, and we have to be careful with them. Our clients don’t want an advertorial, or something that looks like an advertorial. Obviously branded stories are very common, we get offered stories like that all the time, but we have to make sure we can make them work. We are happy to do branded stories if we can interview the celebrities, talk to them about something in their life or job, perhaps relate it to something that integrates the product into the story, and that is a better way of mentioning the product or brand. We can also put a credit at the bottom of the story saying we talked to them in relation to this…For instance it can’t just be Simon Cowell loves “brandX”. That is never going to work as it has to be interesting to the audience.

Where does the content you produce go?

We supply clients including MSN, Yahoo, IPC magazines, Hello! and a lot of regional papers who all take the online showbiz feed.

At the same time I overlap with the wire so if I get a story that is more suitable for the newswire, a bit more traditional or more newsy, it goes on the newswire as well, again in a different style to Premier Showbiz! I also write celebrity interviews for the features wire.

Is video an important part/becoming more important?

Yes, definitely, video is really important to us, we have clients who take video clips with their stories, so we work with video journalists going to things like red-carpet events, or we do video junkets. In that way we’ve got the interviews and we can use them in print form online and on the wire but we also clip up videos to run with our stories online too.

Depending on what we need we either work with the PA video team or we do the videos junkets ourselves as there will just be a fixed camera in place. This is a really good way of us doing interviews rather than just a print interview as we are killing two birds with one stone.

What is the best way for a PR to get in touch with you and the team?

Probably the best way to get in touch with us is over email. We’ve got joint email address for the whole team which is premiershowbiz@pressassociation.com. The whole team gets that and we do respond to that if we get press releases that we are interested in or interview opportunities. Because of the nature of our job a lot of us are out of the office or covering different things so it’s important to reach the whole team.

Do you mind follow up calls?

Follow up calls can be a good idea, especially when the PR draws attention to an aspect of the story I might have not noticed if it’s a very busy day and we have been flooded with press releases. Of course whether I would take the call or not depends on how busy I am.

So what would be the best time for PRs to contact you and the team?

First thing in the morning isn’t a good time to call as we have to come in and get all the stories ready that have broken overnight. The best time for PRs to contact us would usually be after midday when everything starts to calm down.

Thank you very much for your time

On 25th June 2012 Global Radio officially announced that they have bought GMG’s radio division. But what does this mean for the UK radio market?

Currently, Global Radio owns Capital, Heart, and Classical FM, amongst a string of other stations ; while GMG Radio owns Real Radio and Smooth Radio. With this new deal, thought to be around £70million, it is thought Real Radio stations will be re-launched as Heart and Global Radio will come to own over half of the UK’s radio market. But what impact will this have?

With Real and Smooth regional stations, listeners can rely on up to date local information throughout the day. While a change over to Heart from Real Radio may not be to big a problem for the target audience (both within the range of 25-44 years old) the 2.6 million listeners to the five Real regions (covering some of the UK’s biggest cities) may lose this community aspect in the switch over. On Heart, breakfast and drive time shows are the only local broadcast. Heart’s 18 regions then switch to national broadcasts from Leicester Square throughout the rest of the day: something which the station believes to be bringing the ‘best of both worlds’- both local and national information.

One thing which GMG Radio listeners can take solace in is that, in this forthcoming switchover, they can retain the ‘witty banter and celebrity guests’ supplied by stations such as Heart and Capital. But with everyone listening to the same stations, will this not become boring and too similar across the country? Smooth Radio (the second biggest commercial station in the UK) is renowned for its soulful music and songs which are said to ‘reflect the best times of our listener’s lives’. It’s something people tune into specifically for. I, for one, am a big fan of Capital, but listen to it for too long and you do become jaded with the same songs and artists played all day.

Where will the diversity be in commercial stations if large organisations like Global take over smaller stations- will we one day end up with one company which owns all of the commercial stations? And what will the impact be for employees in these smaller local stations? UTV, doesn’t see the ‘public interest’ to merge the two companies and says an enlargement of Global Radio will ‘lock out the competition at a national and local level.’ But at the same time, with Guardian Media Group losing up to £38.3million in newspapers and £4.1million in radio last year alone, is this not something which needs to be done to save those employees and stations? Andrew Miller, CEO of GMG said that “if we believe the best value for the Group lies in disposal of a non-core asset [those that aren't the Guardian or Observer newspapers], then we will do so.” He assures those concerned that it is “an excellent opportunity to develop and flourish”.

For now, it may take a few months before the results of the sale are seen as the stations will continue to be run separately until a merger is agreed by the Office of Fair Trading.

In the mean time, enjoy that regional and community aspect that lies in such stations, because the way things are going, ultimately, we could all be listening to one or two big station that dominates the air waves.

Post by: Daisy Bambridge, Production Support @tnrcommunications