Video now

Next week, Choice FM is running a “Music Potential Taster Day”  for 16-25 year olds. It’s sponsored by Barclaycard Unwind.

Choice has avoided talking about education and training but instead a “chance to learn from the best about the type of roles that the music and radio industries have to offer” under the banner “I have a Choice”. Neat.

And alongside DJ skills, vocal coaching and music production they’ve included film making.

Quite right. Now is a great time for local radio stations and the people who work at them to develop video skills.

Many have already of course, leading to this kind of content from Oxfordshire’s Jack FM in Afghanistan, the library of material coming out of Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball, that of Key103 and video content from the BBC’s multiplatform local news centres.

It’s not too hard to get started in video. Capture and production tools are cheaper than ever, innovators like Adam Westbrook who are forming new approaches to video journalism are sharing their know-how and we have fantastic vehicles to help people find the content: our radio stations. Few others have such a powerful promotional  tool at their disposal.

Now today another good reason to get into video hoves into view: Jeremy Hunt’s plans for local television make it clear that “new” money (some of which is being diverted from the licence fee so really old money) will be invested in local content.

A local radio station will be ideally placed to create some of that.

Picture: some of my radio colleagues setting-up for a video interview in Sierra Leone.