Video killed the radio… star?
Whoa. I’ve done it again. Nearly 5 months since my last posting. I have a good track record in blog abandonment. Apologies.
In my defence, lots of things have happened in the last six months or so.
In July I got married, then went off for the most fantastic ten days in Italy; the mountainside villa combined with visits to Florence, Pisa, Siena and elsewhere; amazing food and wine; and, of course, perfect company was the best antidote to the hectic Saturday just before.
On our return, it was straight back into life with a bump: we both started new jobs, and my six-month contract with BBC Persian TV, the World Service’s Farsi-language television station.
A whirlwind trip (about 20 hours in total including Eurostar travel) to Paris in October was to cover 2011′s G(irls)20 Conference for the Nike Foundation, who sponsored a debate about the personal development of young women in poorer areas of the world, with a particular emphasis on east Africa.
Coming back absolutely shattered to an early Persian TV shift the day after, my boss came over during some down-time, and asked for a quiet word with me. Uh-oh, I thought, having a flashback to three years earlier when ‘a quiet word’ confirmed that my contract wasn’t going to be renewed. Or maybe I’d screwed up on something that morning and not realised it because I’d needed a couple of matchsticks just to keep my eyes open?
“Just wondering if you’d have any objections to us making you permanent staff?” he asked, in his usual quiet, not-going-to-give-away-anything manner.
“OF COURSE I BLOODY DON’T!” I wanted to scream in the corridors of Egton. It’s only what I’d been working towards for the last five years or so. Permanent contracts in content-making areas of the BBC are like gold-dust, and someone was standing in front of me asking if I had any objections?!
So, six months later with my shiny new contract just around the corner due to start on February 1st, and with two extra-special work requests fulfilled already, I’m looking forward to being a permanent member of staff at the BBC. I’ll be able to pay into a pension and go through regular pension reform processes, see staff numbers reduced through regular redundancy rounds or department mergers, while being criticised daily for my work by certain elements of the press. Yay!
I’m still working on websites in my days off, too, and have recently put together sites for a comedian, an audio-visual music recording company, a fashion blogger, a musical trio, a football club and a shop for homemade skincare products.
As for one of those extra-special work requests? This video (below) shows BBC Persian’s business reporter Amir Paivar standing beside the computer program I coded in order to display live market data, including stock markets, individual companies and currencies depending on what the daily news agenda demands:
This has been used on-air a number of times since it was coded, in order to graphically demonstrate the ongoing Eurozone crisis, and more recently to show how quickly the US Dollar:Iranian Rial conversion rates raised as sanctions against Iran’s oil exports were considered and, eventually, implemented.
As for the second special request? Far too complicated to go into here – but if you ever need to work out how to have two guests appear in a TV programme, who both need to be translated for the audience, need to hear both each other and the translator’s live translated questions, and the presenter to hear the translator in the studio – I’m your man!
Leave A Comment | January 23rd, 2012 | World Service TV



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