Election Night goes LIVE Gonzo Style - 11/05/10
"About twenty-five nervous, excited and for once well-dressed students have been gathering throughout the day in the News Room at the University of Winchester. The date is the 6th of May, 2010, and for most people this means Election Day 2010, just like it does for our students. But it is just not like any other election day for them. This is the day when their first broadcast is going to be put on air, online, live – and hopefully being watched by thousands of people who are not only their parents or other halves, but also more ‘important’ such as politics.
Everyone has been working hard to plan it all into detail but even so the panic is now starting to creep up on the Winchester News Online team as every minute seems to go faster towards that crucial 10pm live election coverage start. The WINOL team has been working for weeks and have known for just as long that it will be a long night, filled with sweat, yawns, too much coffee and a few headaches.
As the tedious script writing eventually takes off properly, a lady dressed in blue walks in, telling the team that they can no longer stay in the news room, which is equipped with all the technology they will need throughout the night, any longer due to security reasons. The ice cold, burning journalist eyes that meet these words fill the room with a fuming, negative and downbeat atmosphere that does not go away until the issue is later resolved and the students can go back to panicking about the “real stuff” again.
With only a few hours left until the coverage itself is about to begin, everyone is running around like silly geese, not really knowing what to do, but still somehow managing to pull it all together before 10pm. A script is delivered to the presenter. The studio crew is flying into the studio with just a few minutes before takeoff. The gallery is buzzing with nervousness and nail biting, shouting and directing, too much people but no one really knowing what to do next.
Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five.
PANIC!
Four. Three.
Light, check. Sound, check. Autocue, check.
Two. One.
Presenter cue. GO!
As with everything that involves technology something is bound to go wrong. First possible thing does. The unreliable autocue decides to crash but luckily the presenters are able to pull it off anyway and deliver what seems to be a fantastic show. Fiery spotlights are turning up the heat even more in the studio, while icy air conditioning works hard to cool down the equipment as well as the team yelling to people what to do next in the gallery. A can of Red Bull stands next to the presenters PC and he is asked to move it out of shot. He giggles and does what he is told.
‘SHUT UP’
A million voices are buzzing around the director who cannot hear what is being said in the studio due to the cacophony of noises that merge together as one big choir. But after about ten minutes some sort of calmness fill the studio and the gallery, and our hard working students manage to pull through and give their audience an amazing live show presenting the evenings results streaming in from all around the United Kingdom.
‘SOUND UP’
Sweat dripping down the presenters’ forehead as begging over and over again for the studio sound to be louder, ‘LOUDER’! First outside broadcasting is arriving from our fellow students around in the different constituencies in the South East of England, but it seems it is either sound or picture that does not want to work properly. The two different elements necessary for a broadcast can definitely not cooperate and agree on working as a team, instead all that comes through is either lousy sound with good picture quality or the other way around.
A sigh of disappointment echoes in the gallery as everyone had looked forward to being one of the few, if not the only, university doing something like this with live links around the UK, and other far off places such as Austria. But determined students as the team are, no one gave up and as the evening went on the broadcast came to include some almost professional outside broadcasts from around the country. When the next election comes knocking on our doors, the WINOL team will be more prepared on these challenges and knowing how to work their way to the end result without too much disappointment.
At midnight presenter number two is taking over presenter ones seat and realises the script has somehow not been fully finished, which leaves her with a lot of black holes and empty minutes to fill. The director keep frenetically whispering questions and ideas to her for discussions with the studio guests, and at the same time trying to puzzle the script from the first couple of hours together to something new for the remaining god knows how long time.
At half past two most of the constituency packages are not usable due to the fact that the result for that specific constituency has been announced. The crew ends up with an awful lot of packages with issues being discussed with the public and politics, such as trident, immigration and the economy, but as the minutes go on, even the WINOL team gets tired of seeing the same packages getting repeated over and over again so it is decided to throw in more live commentaries to our news room, where a third presenter does a brilliant job keeping track on what is going on in the UK and what might happen next.
Around 4am the team decides to keep going until the results for Winchester has been announced, which should be “any minute” now. Countless of coffee mugs can be traced between the News Room and the studio, and the apples, bananas and cookies provided in the News Room seem to decrease rapidly as it gets brighter and brighter outside, and as Winchester starts waking up again.
When the results are finally being announced for Winchester the entire studio held its breath waiting for the word – KEEP! – that would keep Winchester under Martin Tod’s regime with the Liberal Democrats, or – GAIN! – which would make the constituency a blue or red part of the map for the next five years. Tiredness, frustration, headaches, excitement, smell of coffee and a big sigh of relief fill the room as the outside broadcaster announces that Winchester has fallen in the hands of the Conservatives, and Steve Brine, and whether the members of the team agree or disagree with the public’s choice they all burst out in a round of applauds – most likely due to the fact that the University of Winchester, and its team of WINOL journalists, is being the first university covering an election live for seven hours and still being alive at 6am in the morning. It has been an amazingly well organised night with memories for the rest of everyone’s lives.
There is something special about that WINOL team."
