As part of my application to work at BBC's new urban music station a while back, I had to

In no more than 600 words, tell us about a music event that you
were involved in organising that has appeal to your target audience.
We'd like to hear about what you did.

Here's what I came up with. Apologies in advance.

As a station that broadcasted only to University halls of residence on medium wave, the opportunity to reach a much larger audience was much anticipated by the members of University Radio Exeter (URE). This was achievable via a restricted service license (RSL), which allowed us to broadcast citywide on FM. During the Citywide broadcast, we reached a large listenership and worked if it were a professional station, with 24 hour weekday and weekend coverage over a two week period. All this, and lectures too!

In February 1998, I took part in my second RSL at URE. My first had been a year earlier, when I presented the latenight show. This time around, I was a lot more involved in the station and the organisational side of things, as I had been elected as head of music. In addition, I was to present the midmorning breakfast show. My main concerns were therefore the preparation and and presenting duties for my own show, ‘Seddonism’, as well as the responsiblilities for the station’s musical output. The preparation & planning for the event began long in advance.

From he show side of things I was testing and piloting ideas on my medium wave show to find out what worked and what didn’t, and trying to build the best team that I could. I wanted to create a real buzz around the show, where the listener knew that she show would be packed with entertainment and wouldn’t want to miss a minute. With this in mind I came up with a series of different features that I could have every day. The items were a mix of comedy sketches which required quite a lot of writing, and features with a basic framework to improvise around. I had arranged a deal with a local pizza takeaway so that I could give away a pizza on my show everydayto As my show had the backing of a good team behind it too (Chris and Kirsty), it meant that they could do their own thing too - this gave me a slight break, and gave a chance for them to be in the spotlight too! For me though, presenting the show itself was the most satisfying and creative aspect as at the end of it all I could see the fruits of my hard work. ( http://www.markseddon.com/SeddonismFM99.html )

On the Station level, the launch involved a lot of work. As a committee member I was part of the meetings that decided how to go about this, including raising the money to go aheasd, attracting advertisers, programming decisions, publicity, events, jingles amd everything in between.
My personal responsibility was over the music. Through the good links that I had built up with pluggers and local stores, I was able to get the very latest music, as well as plenty of freebies to give away in competitions. I also was able to arrange several inverviews for the Citywide broadcast. I greatly enjoyed creating the playlist for the citywide broadcast. It enabled me to craft a station sound of diverse & exiting music to truly give an alterative to the sound of our rival stations. It was good to feel as though I were breaking a few quality tracks that wouldn’t otherwise be heard.

The strongest feeling that I’ll probably take away from the experience was that of the shared experience, and working as a solid team, whether it was the show called “Challenge Anarchists” where a group of DJs, including myself, would be set a series of bizzare challenges by the listeners (such as to become the most famous buskers in Exeter) , or the carnival float that was turned from a disaster into a triumph at the last minute, or the club nights that we organised and DJ-ed at. Ultimately though, the badge of success was the praise that we received from our listeners on the success that we made the event. And I still got my essay in on time.