The University of Bedfordshire’s community radio station, Radio LaB 97.1fm, is to broadcast a special General Election 2015 results programme – ‘Election LaB’ – throughout the night until around 6am Friday morning.
Radio LaB will be working with a team of more than forty students and staff from the University’s Journalism department.
There will be teams of University of Bedfordshire student reporters at every Bedfordshire count and in Milton Keynes, plus more than a dozen journalism student reporters will be based in the University of Bedfordshire newsroom to update Radio LaB listeners, online blogs lutonblog.co.uk & citiblog.co.uk (in Milton Keynes), and social media on the big stories of the night as they unfold.
Radio LaB Coordinator Terry Lee is excited about working with the students on ‘Election LaB’, and the : “With our overnight coverage, and our particular focus on local constituencies, Radio LaB’s ‘Election LaB’ will give local young people the bigger picture, with a local emphasis.”
Students involved in this ambitious programme will also be supplying video for the BBC and collaborating, through the Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC), with other universities across the UK overnight.
In an operation devised by University of Bedfordshire Senior Lecturer and BJTC board member Kate Ironside and the BJTC chief executive Jon Godel, Radio LaB will be able to call on student reporters in counts in Bournemouth, London, Wales, the Midlands, Northern England and Scotland as the night unfolds. In return Bedfordshire students will be providing reports for other student programmes across the UK.
Kate Ironside said: “This operation is based on the overnight operations I used to take part in while working at BBC Westminster and closely replicates industry practice, giving the students a much richer and varied experience.”
The University of Bedfordshire’s election coverage doesn’t end with ‘Election LaB’. Friday 8th May marks the launch of BedsTV, a cross department student-led online Television initiative in the University’s CATS Faculty that will enable students in Media and Journalism to deliver content in a real world environment. The channel will be launched with a live post-election debate aired at 2pm.