Our day started pretty early this morning as we left our hotel in Liverpool and headed 40 minutes on a bus to Manchester.
We started our busy day of media visits with a tour around MediaCity UK and the University of Salford. MediaCity UK used to be an old dockyard, and now it is the hub of digital media in the United Kingdom, housing BBC Sport and Children’s programs, as well as BBC Breakfast and Radio 2, 3, 4, and 6.
As we toured the University of Salford, I noticed many similarities in the majors offered at their MediaCity UK campus, as well as the studios and facilities they had on campus for their students.
Although their university is much larger than Point Park’s, both seemed to share a focus on creative majors and industry-focused learning.
While we had some technical difficulties during Dr. Annabelle Waller’s lecture, we still had an interesting conversation on virtual reality and how that would affect new media. Virtual reality / augmented reality would allow the viewer to see what it is like in someone else’s world, whether that be in pain or joy, or even gender or race.
I thought it was interesting the way Dr. Waller thought about the future of virtual reality within media and how VR is not just a nerd gadget, but a powerful political tool.
After our lecture with Dr. Waller, James Probert, BBC Assistant Producer of Children’s program, Blue Peter. James started his journey with the BBC as a runner on the program, Match of the Day, which is a show that I personally watch very frequently because I follow Premier League football.
I thought it was so cool to see how he worked himself up in the BBC and it was also interesting to hear how the job process works at BBC. At the BBC, there is no such thing as a promotion. You have to complete an interview for each job and that process is all based on a points system.
I loved hearing about the different opportunities James has been presented since working at BBC, with his job not being a normal 9 to 5 and being in such an environment that allows him to rarely feel like he is truly working. That is the type of job I would like to see myself in in the future, one that is not the normal hours you would expect but is also very enjoyable and never the same.
After meeting with James, we got lunch at Wagamama’s (yes, again) and then headed off to our tour of the BBC studios. This tour was definitely one of my favorites we have done so far because a lot of the entertainment-based media related back to my major. We got to tour through various radio studios, as well as some television studios on site.
After being in media visits all morning and afternoon, we rode on the bus for another hour to our hotel in Manchester. We had a nice group dinner and headed back to the hotel to get packed up for our flight to Edinburgh, Scotland tomorrow!