11. Thank you so very much, for this heart warming, haunting yet excellent coverage, of the blitz to Coventry. I cannot tell you how much it has moved me. An absolute wonderful radio show dedicated to the blitz has ultimately resulted, into an amazing radio experience. It gave me goose bumps, sadness, happiness and a feeling of pride, for the people of that time. Pride also that I have a local radio station of excellence. Sincerely. Jo. Allton Exhall.
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Notas del editor
Producer Beyond the Blitz. Beyond the Blitz was the name given by BBC Coventry & Warwickshire’s to our 70 th Anniversary Blitz commemorations. The project was mulit-platform, radio, TV, web and social media. How many from Coventry? How many know about the project? I know you are all here to know more about the social media delivery of our project but the core part of our business is radio so I’m going to play you a shortened version of a story I recorded as part of the project. Michael Logan was 6 in 1940, he told us about his experiences on an earlier raid on the city. . . .
I will never forget what happened. . . I heard that from almost every single person I interviewed. . . And that became the heart of this project. . . It was our job to tell the story of the night, the story in the words of those who lived through it, to keep them as a lasting record and to ensure that younger generations never forget. We ended up being able to do this even more successfully through using our website and social media.
70 stories for 70 years – that was the core of the project. To record and broadcast 70 survivors with their tales of the night. Local radio= local, stories and people. This is all of those. Whenever we do a project we always think of creative ways, treatments with radio. Then online and then TV but with all projects the developments are ongoing. Assessing and reacting. Beginning thinking of new and creative ways to deliver the project on all platforms: on air (sorted), online, on TV But social media . . . It was something we’d not done before. It wasn’t discussed originally, we didn’t have an official account, we didn’t have a presence. A couple of us were twitter users and facebook is used. And so it was not a conscious decision to have a meeting to plan a social media strategy for the project. How it came about. . . Already had plans to go back in time for part of the overnight broadcasts. . ..and then Rolling news happened. I think if we hadn’t thought of a creative way of delivering our output and content via social media we wouldn’t have done it. Merit.
Who is tweeting? What are they tweeting? Multiple accounts – families Restricted eyewitness Core business news and allowed us to report everything from everywhere. We understand that Twitter is a conversational tool and we would be interested to engage with people who respond. With some of the tweets referencing streets, places etc it could provoke a response from those that live there now. Or people may even want to tweet memories from relatives who remember the Blitz. We'd like to utilise these responses and engage with them too. War of the Worlds – Account name and biog important. Clearly marked so no panic scenarios took place reading about bombs in timelines. Date stamp also added.
Different audience to local radio. . . . Crudely, this year could be one of the last big anniversaries where there are living survivors and we feel that this medium could remind the younger population of Coventry (who is often negative about the look of the city) is reminded why our city looks as it does and remembers what the residents went through 70 years ago. Coventry has a good twitter community and these are people who may not access our services regularly. We are also aware that it will take time for the account to build up followers, which is why we'd like to start this soon. ---------------------------------------------------------- The account went live a week before we started to tweet and talk about it. Build up followers and have some tweets already in the timeline for what people could expect. Went live on 16 August. Our on air campaign started on 23 August, one week later. Followers built up steadily and people start to #ff and RT
A reminder that it could now be a prisonable offence to waste food. Any spare food can be used to feed animals, such as pigs. 19/10/40: http://twitvid.com/7JAED - For those who haven't seen inside Coventry's beautiful cathedral, take a look with this footage. 04/11/40: We've found some more pictures of our great city, taken over the past year or so. Again, can you spot yourself? http://bbc.in/cAw7Ux NEXT SLIDE HAS AUDIOBOO STARTING STRAIGHT AWAY. . . .
As time went on we started to build the account. Adding audioboos, links to web features, Pathe archive and Twitvids. Tweets were scheduled nearly every 30 minutes at the start of the night. Real buzz. Instant reaction with the RTs and comments being made. . . .knew it was working.. . Connecting a community. Play audio from 11pm on 14 November. Described as chilling and very moving
Really pleased with the reactions we received, here are just a few. . . . . Restricted to keep in character Restricted to the era
Web features for projects like this are a given. Photo galleries, features, news reports etc. What could we do to add real value? 38 features, galleries and pages about the Blitz were created. So proud of this. . . .came about organically. Mainly geekily for me, people started to tell me road names, places and then the next would mention the same thing. I started to plot them for my own reference on a google map. I was able to show the central web team exactly what I wanted. Photos of the people then and now helped and it also meant we needed to gather a lot more data. Stories started to overlap. Road names became more significant piecing together a giant jigsaw. Map – plotting. Web support centrally to create Reach new audiences and audiences outside Coventry with the stories and audio. City Archives. BUT . .I’ve had emails from teachers across the country who are using it as a classroom resource. I’ve heard a social inclusion team are playing the stories to asylum seekers to get them to understand the local dialect and learn about the city’s history!
People came to us. Negotiate 5Live – Sun brk OB 14 th November. Played 3 of our cut down stories, 2 contacts, crediting us on each. Tweeted a link to our webpage (website spike Sunday) BBC World Service Witness Alan Johnston listened to stories and came to our tea dance to interview our survivors - plus film for website feature - link to 70 stories page BBC 1 Robert Hall 12 th November breakfast piece using guests we suggested – strap crediting our website (website spike Friday) (show) BBC Online – asked for content for conspiracy stories – lead icon sun 14th on bbc.co.uk Radio 4 pick of the week (we contacted via switchboard – keen to hear more) Ariel – two stories