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.