Last weekend, 8 members of SonarTV travelled down to the University of Exeter for NaSTA40, the annual NaSTA Conference and Awards weekend, hosted by XTV. The weekend was a great experience, with talks from industry professionals (including people from BBC, ITV, Sky, CBS News and The Network) as well as the all-important NaSTA Awards 2013.

Our very own Station Manager, Rowan Johnson was elected the NaSTA Marketing Exec for 2013-2014, and on top of that, we were shortlisted for 4 of the 12 catagories we entered into this years NaSTA Awards.

• Shortlisted for Best Freshers Coverage
• Shortlisted for Best Title Sequence
• Shortlisted for Best Music Show
• Shortlisted for Best On-Screen Female (Georgie Laming)

You can view all of our photos from the weekend on our Facebook page here, and view all of our entires in the playlist above.

So NaSTA40 has ended and the handover process has commenced. A huge thank you to Rowan and Graham for the amazing hard work they have put in taking SonarTV to another level. Your new Station Manager is now Tom Garrihy and new Assistant Manager Kai Brittain. We both endeavour to not only keep up the hard work that was put in the past year but also if possible improve upon it.

If you have any queries you can email:

info@sonartv.co.uk
or
Tom Garrihy: stationmanager@sonartv.co.uk
Kai Brittain: assistantmanager@sonartv.co.uk

Check out the on-demand version here!

Every Friday from 6pm to 8pm on Radio Sonar is The Part Time Chart Show. We did a short promo video to show off the show, which you can listen to at www.radiosonar.co.uk

Filmed and edited by Graham Fitzgerald

Georgie Laming spoke briefly with Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, as he entered Eastleigh town centre on Saturday 9th February. Filmed by Graham Fitzgerald. Interview by Georgie Laming.

Sunday 10th February

Georgie Laming spoke with John O’Farrell, potential candidate for Eastleigh Labour, in their HQ. Filmed by Graham Fitzgerald. Interview by Georgie Laming.

sonartv.co.uk

On January 30th 2013 SonarTV hosted NaSTAvision, a Eurovision style song contest bringing together the very best of student television stations across the country. The competition was joint hosted with Staffs TV at Staffordshire University, and organised in partnership with NaSTA, the National Student Television Association. (Hence NaSTAvision.)

The contest was broadcast live online and relayed by INQB8R into a number student residences across the country. (A service which replaces Channel 4 on TV sets in applicable areas.) Some stations also independently relayed the broadcast to screens located in their universities and students’ unions.

The competition itself was split into two award categories; Audience Vote and Judges’ Choice. The audience vote award was awarded to GUST (Glagow) based on live audience feedback to the show. The judges’ choice award was awarded by an independent panel consisting of Lawrence Bolton (NaSTA chair), Tom Walsh (AV Specialist at JANET, who provided the streaming functionality), Foxi Rear, and Kitty Brucknell (X Factor Contestant) who decided on a winning station based on a number of criteria. This award was given to YSTV, York.

As was apparent on the night SonarTV suffered from a number of technical issues, resulting in a lack of presence from us on the live show, even though we carried the primary publicly viewable stream for a majority of the broadcast.

The first issue we faced was a playback issue with one of our VT Machines in the studio which wasn’t configured correctly before the broadcast started. This is unusual for the studios as they are typically configured to work without the need for students to modify any settings, so it’s understandable as to why it caught us of guard. This meant that we handed over to Staffs TV to continue their next section, but instead of moving to their next segment they played our clips meaning that we had nothing to come back to. When we finally came back to Solent to talk to the judging panel we were hit with a power cut in our control room which caused our streaming computer, vision mixer, and other equipment to power off unexpectedly. As they were being run completely off the mains we were unable to continue broadcasting and handed the entire show over to Staffs TV.

It was a very disappointing ending for a show that our team had been working on for months, but it couldn’t be helped. The issues that we faced were largely beyond our control (we had a team of almost thirty people, we had more than enough equipment, etc.). Admittedly the issues could have caused less of an impact with a proper contingency plan and I know we could have been more organised if we weren’t spending the majority of our time caught up in the politics caused by splitting the show between two stations with very different ideas (I’m sure Staffs TV will agree with me), but ultimately if the same issues had occurred in any other situation it would have been the same outcome. Everyone at SonarTV is thankful for the help of the NaSTA Exec, who manned the social media channels to clarify what was happening, and most importantly Staffs TV who continued the broadcast spectacularly despite having more than their anticipated share of the workload thrown on them at the last minute.

With that said, we are very proud of what actually went out from our station. Although we were, for all intents and purposes, exempt from the competition* we feel that our entry would have been a very strong contender if we had been taking part, and I can’t thank everyone who took part in the broadcast enough for the effort that they put into making it as good as it could be. Wether that was the crew who attended on the night, Solent Students’ Union who generously helped the project financially and supported us on the day, Southampton Solent University who provided the equipment, space and attempted to help us find a judging panel, or the NaSTA Exec who not only supported us during the run up to the competition but also took time out to visit our station (in one case coming to Southampton all the way from Glasgow) to help us on the night, without this help we would have been unable to produce even half of what we had on the night.

(*To clarify, we were not included as an option for the judges award as we were a host station, and we had no chance of winning the audience award as the majority of our audience was busy running the broadcast.)

To look at NaSTAvision as a failure would be short sighted. I hope that anyone reading this can look past the issues and see the positives of attempting a project like this. Although it didn’t go one hundred percent to plan, at the very least we attempted it which is more than can be said for many students. In the words of one of the technicians at our university who helped us with the project, “You guys are crazy. Most students would run one hundred miles from something like this.” We don’t attempt projects like this because we necessarily expect them to go perfectly -because in the real world they don’t either- but because we enjoy the experience of doing them and will realistically only get the chance to while we’re students. To me it’s the very reason that groups like Sonar Media exist, because in my eyes it’s better to look back and say we did something, or at least tried to do something, than to look back and wish we that had.

Rowan Johnson
Station Manager, SonarTV

On Wednesday January 30th from 5pm, SonarTV are co-hosting NaSTAvision with Staffs TV. NaSTAvision is a huge live broadcast in association with NaSTA, bringing together student TV stations from all over the country for a night of musical acts, celebrity judges and friendly competition.

Tune in live at nasta.tv from 5pm on January 30th!

Tom Garrihy is back with another series of The Hangover Show – your guide to everything going on during Refreshers Week.

Stay tuned as we bring you highlights and coverage of the best week of your life..again.

Filmed by Kai Brittain. Edited and Presented by Tom Garrihy.

sonartv.co.uk

solentsu.co.uk

Following a week on Graduation Ceremonies in Southampton Guildhall, the Graduation Ball is the finale of an emotional week for many. Taking place in Provenance, the acts for the evening included Arp Attack, Fly Frankie Fly and Tinchy Styder.

Filmed by Greg Spreadborough, Georgina Brown, Melissa Vernon, Rowan Johnson and Peter Hughes. Edited by Graham Fitzgerald.

solentsu.co.uk

On November 30th 2012, to celebrate Movember and to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK, Solent Students’ Union, alongside Solent University, set out to break the world record for ‘Largest Gathering of People With Moustaches’ in Guildhall Square.

Filmed by Heather Kemp. Presented by Georgie Laming. Edited by Graham Fitzgerald.