Behind The Mike
Behind The Mike is a daily prep service for radio practitioners: presenters, producers and the people who keep a show alive between the songs.
Every morning, thousands of presenters open a browser at 4am and start hunting. What is everyone talking about? What is the angle? What do I actually ask? Behind The Mike does the hunting, the summarising and the angling, so you walk into the studio with something to say.
Mike Bower is a radio practitioner and content producer. The prep here is the prep he wanted for his own shows: short, opinionated, and written to be said out loud.
Good prep is not knowing everything. It is having one thing worth asking.
Three from today.
A long-running wellbeing survey has pinpointed the age at which concern about other people's opinions drops sharply, and it is earlier than most people guess. The researchers say the shift is less about confidence and more about running out of energy to pretend. Respondents past that age describe it as the best thing that ever happened to them.
A bakery's decision to change the bread on its famous chicken mayo sandwich triggered a petition, a council meeting and a local radio phone-in that ran for two hours. The bakery has reinstated the original loaf and apologised. The petition organiser says democracy works.
A mid-sized city scrapped bus fares entirely and saw ridership double within a year, along with a measurable drop in traffic and an unexpected rise in visits to the city centre. The scheme costs less than the road maintenance it has offset. Other cities are watching closely.
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