New Show Poster:

I have made a new show poster for my show, the top 10 tracks of the week all in one show, every Monday from 4pm-5pm, only on HCR 92.3FM and online at http://www.hcr.org.uk/

Check out my show website at http://www.hcrryan.webs.com/

Keep your requests and shout outs coming though, thanks everyone!

HCR Awards With 'HAM' from Halton Voice - Monday 27th April 2009

On Monday 27th April 2009, Myself along with some other from the youth forum went with Pete to the Stobart Stadium, Halton for the Halton Voice awards night.

The whole project HAM (Halton Access To Media) got an award for bringing something into the community, from running the react course for people to learn about media and the blackground behind radio and how to work the studio ect to running Halton Community Radio (the radio for the people of Halton by the people of Halton).

6 of the Halton Youth Media Forum (the young people at HCR) got an award on the night for there work.

Myself would like to say thanks to Pete, because without him we would not have a HCR and we would not of been able to do the course, and also he put a lot on time into the station, well done Pete!

:)

New show(ish)

I have been doing my show for many weeks now and I have thought its time for change so....
..... tune on to HCR Ryan's Top 10 every Monday from 4pm with the top 10 music tracks of the week, lastest new and playlists will be on the HCR forum :)

2 Frowzy Hours - 28/02/09

Today was a momentous occasion for me. I was on desk and it didn't go horrendously wrong! A few bumps along the way (mainly my head on the mic) but other than that it genuinely went alright. There were no awkward silences and callers weren't crazy nor was iix things whilst we melted downrun for Pete to fix things whilst we melted down like a witch in a gingerbread house.

I started out alone  and had planned for such an event (read: contingency plan was blind panic), then Shanice Warrington came along and sat in the studio with me and we chatted and hopefully had fun (I did, at least).

We played Us and Them from The Dark Side of the Moon 12'' release! Followed immediately by Will Smith's Gettin' Jiggy Wit It (the weird world of Halton Community Radio).

So yeah, really happy that it went that well - something of an achievement for me. Next week, Heather and I will be in Rome (to dust off an old chestnut, woo) so Shanice Warrington and whoever she decides to bring on with her. Should be a good laugh, do listen.

News: Mondays With Ryan

HCR Ryan (me) now has a Facebook group, for any music lovers of the type of music I play, to join (or even if you just want to join the group that will be great)!

The group will be sending out mail though Facebook with all my show updates on it. Also there will be image adverts for my show with upcoming show events so keep checking back for them.

Feel free to post your comments on the wall.

To access this please go to Facebook, search 'HCR RYAN' and click on join.

Many Thanks.

Note: Halton Community Radio is not responsible and has no control over the contents of this Facebook group.

HCR Sport

If you listened to the great show that the 'Friday sports show' did this week (20th Feb), you would have heard an outstanding show.

This week on the show, Producer Mike, Glyn Davies, Michael Scowcroft and I started off the show as usual. It was my first time on the Friday sports show. We had Iain Marrison, John Stankevitch and Pat Cluskey in the studio for an extra hour of HCR Sport, we talked about everything and everything about the club, players, Steve McCormack's departure (see previous posts) and so much more.

Mike, Glyn and I will be at the stobart stadium tomorrow at for the Widnes vs Gateshead game - we will report back as soon as we can about the game and its results.

Missed out on our show tonight? It will be on www.widnesvikings.org.uk as soon as we can.

Youtube and HCR

Just a quick post to let all our fans out there at Halton Community Radio now has a Youtube channel.

You can find out more and view our channel at: http://www.youtube.com/haltoncommunityradio

If you have any questions or would like to report a video please contact me on hcrryan@yahoo.com.

Many Thanks,

Ryan.

News About 'Mondays With Ryan'

Hello just a little bit of news for you: I am thinking of some kind of game or other feature to put on my show to get you, as listeners (which is what my show is all about - the listeners and what they want) involved in my show by joining in some kind of game, which should be a laugh and that's what my aim is: to get the listeners involved and make the show even better for you lot out there.

I have now set up an email address for when I am off-air so you can get in touch if you want me to play any requests or give shout-outs to you or maybe just to say hi or ask a question. Feel free, for whatever reason, to email: hcrryan@yahoo.com and also there's my website which is: http://www.hcrryan.webs.com/

As soon as the game (or feature) has been produced, I will let you know and hopefuly you will hear and get involved on my show as soon as I can get it into place.

Thanks again to all the listeners out there and hope to hear you soon.

Ryan,
Mondays With Ryan (4pm, every Monday, live on HCR 92.3FM)

Gordon Burns Interview

"Thank you sir, you're a saint."

With that, I put the phone down. I'd just got off the phone with Gordon Burns or, in case you only recognise him by face, this man:

Yes, that one. Well, let's say that my first (broadcast) interview didn't go quite as smoothly as planned. We started the interview a good hour and a half late, due to various technical issues (read: hadn't the foggiest what I was doing on desk). Most people as busy as Mr Burns, I think, would've simply left it and not given us the interview. Gordon, however, in true gentlemanly fashion he rang us back and even gave me a helping hint with the questions and indeed reassuring me it wasn't a cardinal sin to delay him.

As you'll hear in the interview, he's clearly experienced on the other side of the phone. So he's a competent and sympathetic interviewee (doing my job for me, at parts).

So, if you hear a friendly, familiar voice on Halton Community Radio in the jingles that we have - do bear in mind that he managed to sound that cheerful after the awful delays we put him through, us being the amateurs that we are. Also, it'd be much appreciated if you could be pleased  on my behalf for getting it.

The interview will be broadcast first on Saturday 7th or 14th, between 12 and 2 in the afternoon in installments and thereafter probably available on both the Halton Community Radio website and the Halton Youth Media Forum's.

New Schedule On HCR

Just a little bit of information about how the shows and times have changed as you may not already know, due to there not being an update yet on hymf.org which is our main website for Halton Youth Media Forum.

Here are the new times for HYMF:

Monday 4-5 Ryan T
Wednesday 4-5 Beccy, Chloe, Ind and Cameron
Friday 3-4 Chris D and Sam K
Friday 5-6 Joanne Levis
Friday 6-7 Callum, Mark and Kiefer
Saturday 12-2 Mike, Heather, Connor and Ste
Saturday 2-3 Carl, Callum and Shanice
Saturday 3-4 Adam

EDIT: Schedule's been updated now [Michael Laughton]

2 Frowzy Hours - 31/01/09

Well, another week, another fiasco. My fellow forum member has already pointed out that Studio 1 was originally broken so we had to broadcast from studio 2. A nightmare. Seriously, an awful experience but one for which we are better people.

EDIT: Studio 1 was fixed at around 14:00 on the day marked in the post. I forgot to mention it.

First Hour: Not much
We just played some music and got used to the idea of broadcasting from studio 2. Ste coped very well on desk, I'd've flapped and gone mental at the sheer prospect and I wouldn't be writing this blog post for you.

Second Hour: Discussion and Shanice
We were talking about the uselessness of the UK Youth Parliament so Ste, Heather, Shanice and I all ranted for a good 20 minutes in the guise of a discussion about the merits of it. Luckily, next week we are trying to get hold of the co-ordinator for the election in Halton and indeed the successful candidates. We really do know how to charm our interviewees don't we? Speaking of which, hopefully (if all goes to plan) - 2 Frowzy Hours will have an interview with Gordon Burns (the legendary newscaster from BBC Northwest Tonight and former presenter of The Krypton Factor). HCR really has gone upstream, we've got a few exciting interviews lined up over the course of the next few weeks.

Some comments on new shows
I listened to Adam Lyons' show as I wrote this post. Truly, a wonderful listen although it's quite nerve-wracking to listen to, given his escapades against his mother the last time he broadcast. He brought Phil in, I think they'd make a good double act. Do stay tuned for the show - it's certainly interesting.

Update on Bane

Bane's arm has been found! So his fork prosthesis has been binned and now he is once more armed and dangerous (Heather'll be pleased).

Drag and Drop Session In Studio2

Well, one whole hour of studio2; it's too small to broadcast from but some how I did it. The show went well with the whole thing of drag-and-drop - all due to a soundcard in studio1. Hopefully it shall be fixed by next Friday at 4pm till 5pm for the new-and-improved Chris and Sam show (when she turns up). Overall, it was a good hour.

Got any ideas for a quiz or debate? Email them to chris@hymf.org.

That's all for now until next week! Keep Halton a decent place to be and keep listening to HCR 92.3FM or online at http://www.hymf.org/ and click listen live.

Also, you can join the Myspace groups.myspace.com/haltonyouthmediaforum or visit the HCR site www.hcr.org.

Up-coming Show: 26/1/09

Hello all!

First of all I would like to thank all the listeners who tune into the HYMF and all the shows that are part of it. Also, I would like to thank all the members of the HYMF (and HCR as a whole) that bring the best types of music to the people of Runcorn and Widnes and world-wide, as we are now online, broadcasting 24/7!

Ways of tuning in of course are: 92.3FM (in the Halton area) or http://www.hymf.org and click 'Listen Live' for all people who didn't know.

I am mainly posting at this time to tell everyone about what to look forward to on Monday's show:

• Great music from the old school, lastest dance and so much more.
  
• Don't forget every week I do the 'Top 4 @ 4'!

Please check out my website for all the information about my show:
http://www.hcrryan.webs.com/

Why not get yourself a shout-out or ask for a song, while my show is on from 4pm till 5pm every Monday on on HCR?

Thanks for listening.

2 Frowzy Hours - 24/01/09

Well, I got entirely abandoned today so it was just Bane and I in the studio today. I was briefly accompanied by Stuart Richie straight after his show as he was fixing the web cast (yay, it's working again).

I appealed to the masses to speak to me but it didn't happen. Ryan came in for 15 minutes, then the Forum was kicked out for Halton Volunteers which is fair enough so we managed to sit around and play on the N64 for a few hours.

There was a controversy though as some sadistic person has managed to take an arm from Bane (if I were in a chat room, I'd asterisk-bracket the words 'looks at Heather'). I'll show you a picture of him with his new prosthesis:

It's all serious work at Halton Community Radio - we always help a charitable cause.

Edit - funny exchange, upon seeing the 'prosthesis':

Ryan (from Monday Nights with Ryan Taylor): Well, it's not very realistic is it?

Me: It's a [...] pirate gorilla, Ryan.

Mondays with Ryan - 19/01/09

Hello! This is just a little bit of what happened on the show this week, if you missed an hour of the best ever dance, old school, R 'n' B and so much more of the best music ever produced! If you've never heard my show before here is what you're missing out on The Top 4 @ 4 - giving you the hottest top four tracks of the week!

If you missed it, this week's top four were:

1. Move Shake Drop - DJ Laz ft. Flo Rida
   
2. Just Dance - Lady Gaga
   
3. Sober - Pink
   
4. Cash In My Pocket - Wiley

Tune in every week to see if the top 4 have changed!


This week I also played:

• 90s megamix
• When It Was Me - Sweet xx
• True Believer - E-type
• Kids - MGMT
• And so much more

You can find me every Monday from 4pm on Halton Community Radio! Please check out my website for loads more information: http://hcrryan.webs.com/

Thanks for reading!

Halton Youth Media Forum (At Large) - 17/01/09

Warning, this'll be a long one because it's for all 4 hours. I'll try and keep it as brief as possible.

First Hour - Soup, sweets & rock 'n' roll

Today, we all dove in for the long haul. We were a bit thin on the ground today which happens sometimes. We had Adam, Becca, Chloe, Chris, Heather, India, Sam, Shanice, Ste, Ryan and me in the studio for the first hour, which we spent discussing the relative merits of drinking soup/eating soup out of a cup/bowl. I appealed for a soupologist to no avail so s/he could correct us in our terminology. I think we argued about Girls Aloud too - a running thing between most of the forum and Sam.

Oh, the picture of Bane that I promised:

Second Hour - Debate/Discussion

For the second hour, we went all serious and started talking about Prince Harry of Wales' comments about his Asian comrade. I'd say we came to the conclusion that this is being massively overstated and whilst we agreed that the term "paki" is offensive, we differed on whether it was offensive in this context. We had a caller on the subject, Lynn, who brought up the issue of political correctness and said our discussion was perhaps hampered by our (obvious) unwillingness to use the terms. I disagreed with her yet her call is greatly appreciated as it was a very measured point of view with many reasonable points. She equated Harry's usage of the term with "going for an Indian". Again, I disagreed but all of us in the studio thought she'd brought up a few good points.

We were fraught with technical issues as always - this week Christopher Hitchens nearly found himself unwittingly on our show, several songs misbehaved and stuck where they shouldn't've and just general little snags. Run-of-the-mill stuff. Certainly nowhere near as bad as having all the songs Myriad possesses playing out in one massive belch of sound. Though, a belch was heard from the ever-ladylike Shanice (see what I did there?). Sadly this was on air, whilst not one of our technical difficulties, so it made for strange listening.

Third Hour - Rock 'n' Roll

I think I sat out for most of the third hour, having been exhausted from trying to keep the discussion on topic - which is harder than it sounds when discussions that were trailing off everywhere from the Monarchy's relative merits to bringing up the fact I was drinking soup during the conversation (for those who were interested and disagreed when I said it was immaterial, it was tomato) - and going in the right way as well as keeping track of everything else that comes with trying to present a show. So there might be another blog post about what happened then from the people in there. I think they just had another music hour to be honest, I could be wrong.

Fourth Hour - Much ado about... something.

So, we find ourselves in the last hour. Truly the funniest hour I've ever spent on radio. I do sympathise with the parties involved yet no-one can deny that it was excellent. Off-mic, we were talking about the fact that Adam's mum works in the school that he goes to (and the one that I go to too). We were discussing whether or not it was awkward or not, fairly he said that it is quite awkward to have your mum working in your school because you can't really have freedom and so on. So, I suggest that we talk about this on air thinking it'd be a nice perspective on life (as it was something I've always wondered about). To both of our horrors (Carl and I were the only people there at this point other than Adam), he launches into a tirade about his mum and how horrible she is. Massively cringe-worthy for me, I try to get Adam to moderate himself and stick up for his poor mother. Just as I joke about how his mum is going to phone in - she does. Can't divulge the details of the call though I think you can all imagine how that phone call went.

Hilarity ensued.

Oh, as a side note, tune in throughout the week for a few surprises. All will be revealed later.

The Second Hour - 10/01/09

Our show is the one and only, in the words of Chesney Hawkes. The man is a god.
We played songs including Chesney Hawkes. We wanted to play the Cheeky Girls but it wasn't there - gutted! :(

We had a couple of requests but didn't want to play them. Some of the requests were Bon Jovi. We don't like them because they try to be like Chesney Hawkes but fail badly!

We talked about mints which taste like Yorkshire Puddings - India liked them. Cameron and India turned up at 12 and sat on the radiator for an hour. BRING BACK THE CHEEKY GIRLS!

CHEEKY CHEEKY :) CHESNEY HAWKS FOR PRESIDENT! :)

CHEEKY CHEEKY LOVE BECCA, CHLOE, INDIA AND CAMERON :):) X

The Frowzy Hour - 10/01/09

Allow me to christen this blog as its first poster about the subject matter. The forum decided, now that we've been cast apart into four separate hours like an audio Tower of Babel, that this blog would be our common ground where we blog about what we've been doing and how things are going behind the desk (admittedly, on the Frowzy Hour, you pretty much know what's going on anyway - I've always said it's like listening to the Making Of documentary). You'll probably end up reading about our various diverging opinions of the direction the forum's going in as well as the station itself. All good stuff, no? Riveting reading, I'm sure we'll keep you hooked.

So, after our three week hiatus The Frowzy Hour came back to assault the ears and minds of the good people of Halton (and, indeed, the not-so-good people of Halton - radio doesn't discriminate). Three weeks in radio is a long time it appears, we're now online - as you're probably tired of hearing - so this has brought about listeners from our nation's glorious capital. When you pass the reACT course, you can be forgiven for thinking all the presenters have had frontal labotomies because we reflexively recite the "call in, text in, 92.3FM", well allow me to apologise in advance for adding something else for you to phase out of your mind whilst waiting for the lengthy well-informed discussion or excellent standard of music.

Regardless, The Frowzy Hour returned as well as the rest of the Media forum. You'll see some more of them blogging in the coming months as we have more reACT graduates so that'll all be fun and games. I think we'll all agree that we didn't do too much except get back into the routine of radio presenting (we didn't do that either, because Chris was on desk for us - thanks). We were going to have a discussion about vegetarianism but our legendary timing skills prevented us from doing it (as well as having no dissenting opinion which is something of a necessary ingredient to any radio discussion). The only news-worthy thing that happened is that Connor turned up (whay)! So, as always, nothing to report home about.

Happy reading!

Mike Laughton & the rest of the Frowzy Hour presenters (now including Bane!)

Welcome to the HYMF Blog

Welcome to the new-and-improved blog, you should find the different shows of the forum's four hours broadcasting every Saturday 12pm til 4pm@92.3fm.