A group of students from the Academy have now completed their two days of hands on training at the Key 103 studios in Castlefield, Manchester in preparation for the launch of the Academy's very own online radio station.

The best fifteen students from the Key 103 Media Bus sessions last term were given the opportunity to spend a day at Key 103 recording a 45-minute radio show which would feature a couple of advertisements, news, sport and entertainment news bulletins, exclusive interviews as well as upto date music tracks.

At the studios on day one the students were split up into three groups; Presentators, Creative and Marketing and News. The news team produced a news bulletin which featured the latest news stories from current affairs, sport and entertainment. The creative and marketing team were given the task of coming up with a name for the station and a slogan in addition to designing two advertisement scripts for the station; one advertising the radio and one advertising the Academy itself. The advertisements were then recorded with the help of freelance voice over artists and edited in the studio by the students.

The presenters were lucky enough to recored an interview with Phillip Martin Brown aka Grantly Budgen from Waterloo Road, whilst the news team quizzed Manchester Councillor Pat Karney!

The marketing team later produced a powerpoint mapping out their visions for the station. The powepoint outlined the radio station name, strapline, what music is going to be played, target audience, what's going to be coming up on the radio and how our radio will be marketed to the staff and students and other stakeholders of the Academy. Students eventually decided upon the name 'Random Radio' with the slogan, 'Your music, Your way'.

Stay tuned as the first show will go live online on Monday 26^th April 2010 and will be available to listen to on the Random Radio web page.

Pictures from the two day event can be found here, including pictures of the students with up and coming young British pop star 'Fugitive' who was at the studios promoting his new single 'Crazy'!