Welcome to Sound & Vision Media

Mark in BBC Radio Devon Exeter studio in 1984

I first walked into a local radio station in Exeter in November 1980.  DevonAir Radio was about to break the mould in the City and its mix of music and local news was welcomed with open arms. I was still at school, so my part time job involved working behind the scenes on the Saturday sport programme and making gallons of tea for presenters like Bob Kingsley, Paul Owens, John Pierce and Pete Barraclough.

By the time I move across to work at BBC Radio Devon’s Exeter studio when it launched in 1983 I was well and truly hooked. I knew that local broadcasting was something I cared passionately about and wanted to do as a full time career. I went away to train as a broadcast journalist and after a spell working for the BBC in the Midlands I came back to Radio Devon in the mid eighties as a reporter and producer, working alongside the likes of Jill Dando and Ben Bradshaw. They were extremely happy days working under the charismatic Liverpudlian manager of the station Roy Corlett. The newsroom was well funded and there was a real feeling that we covered local news and issues properly.  The stations balance of news, entertainment and music was just right and it reflected well in listening figures as a good alternative to Devonair.

I moved across from reading news, to fronting the station’s sport output and in 1989 joined Television South West. The studio at Derry’s Cross in Plymouth was full of people who’d worked two decades early at Westward Television, and it was amazing the number of viewers who still referred to the evening local news programme as the ‘Diary’... a name that had stopped being used many years previously.

It highlighted the affection people had then, and I believe still retain, for local broadcasting.

It may not be as strong as it once was, there may be a lot more rival channels and we might all be busier these days, but I still firmly believe that beneath it all, local people still want local news.

Perhaps we don’t like admitting that !  Maybe we don’t fight hard enough for it ! Could it be that we won’t realise just how much it means to us until it’s too late !

I worked in London at the beginning of the 1990’a for the football programme ‘Saint and Greavsie’. I enjoyed it, but after a while missed local broadcasting, and it was one of the main reasons why I decided to return home and join Westcountry TV when it took over from TSW in 1993.

Sadly two years ago, ITV shut its Plymouth studio and moved its Westcountry base to Bristol.  Heart Radio shows mostly come from London, and now it seems as if the BBC are considering scaling down its local radio operation and shutting those Exeter studios I first walked into 28 years ago.  The one hope I have for truly local broadcasting in the city is Exeter FM 107.3.  It still has some local shareholders.  Its presenters actually sit in an Exeter studio and talk about local issues.  Let’s pray that it, at least, gets even stronger as the others take a backwards step.

Clearly the advance of technology has had a major impact. As well as all those new tv channels, we can watch programmes on-line,  listen to any radio station we want on computers and read papers on ipad’s. Recently the Herald Express newspaper in Torbay made the decision to go weekly because of falling sales. I really hope that the Express and Echo doesn’t have to follow suit. I’d miss the daily read and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

I’m seriously worried about where we’re heading. In ten years time where will we get local news? Will we be totally reliant on blogs, twitter updates or the new craze that will be with us by then?  How will we ensure the impartiality that we’ve come to expect over the years from traditional newspapers radio and TV.

As local media outlets are eroded one by one, what can we do about it.? Is it inevitable that there will be none left in a decade? Is it already too late to reverse the decline.? I really hope not.  There really has to be a place for it in this modern and as I said earlier….we’ll desperately miss it when its gone !

Mark broadcasting on Hospital radio Exeter in 1983

What a great week we’ve had here at SAV Media.

The highlight of our busy schedule was the launch of a new Sport England initiative for our good friends at Active Devon and the Cornwall Sports Partnership. They’re delivering a fantastic project called Sportivate that allows young people aged between 14 and 25 to have a go at pretty much any sport or exercise activity you can think of.

A fantastic day to get out on the water

The scheme was launched nationally on Tuesday and we were really excited to be involved in the event that kicked off Sportivate here in the South West. We were at Roadford Lake for one of several free watersports taster sessions that had been laid on for young people from Devon and Cornwall.

We were blessed with absolutely glorious weather, brilliant sunshine and a decent breeze – we’d like to say we arranged that but some things are beyond even SAV’s organisational powers! Mark did his usual highly professional job of hosting the formal presentations and it was really good to have the event so well supported both locally and nationally by the likes of Jeremy Lemarchand and Tim Coventry from Sport England, Graham Manchester from the RYA and Andy Parsons from our superb hosts, the South West Lakes Trust.

It was also great to have a true sporting champion there to endorse what Sportivate is all about. Izzy Hamilton from Bude is the world youth windsurfing champion and she’s a good bet to represent GB at the 2016 Olympics. She didn’t need any persuasion to get into her wetsuit and on to the water to help the youngsters who’d signed up to have a go at dinghy sailing and windsurfing. What a star. It was brilliant to watch her out there passing on a few tricks of the trade and to see those novices having so much fun and to hear such a lot of them saying they wanted to come back and do it again, despite a few capsizes and dunkings.

Mark hosts the launch and introduces VIP guests

Now Roadford is a beautiful location but it isn’t the easiest to reach for some of our hard-pressed media colleagues with so many calls on their time and stretched resources. But with SAV media, NO PROBLEM. With our unique background, skills and contacts  it meant we could service everybody’s needs. We sent out comprehensive press releases for newspapers and websites, audio clips for all our local radio stations and made a video that captured just how successful the Sportivate launch was. We know how to put on an event here in the Westcountry. We do have one regret though – we didn’t manage to get Matt Evans or Karen Jones from Active Devon and Tim Marrion or Natasha Howard from the Cornwall Sports Partnership anywhere near the water! Maybe next time…