Fourteen parties took part in the race for the MP seat:
Party - Candidate
Liberal Democrat - Mike Thornton
Conservative - Maria Hutchings
Labour - John O'Farrell
UKIP - Diane James
Independent - Danny Stupple
Monster Raving Loony Party - Howling Laud Hope
Elvis Loves Pets - David Bishop
National Health Action Party - Dr Iain Maclennan
Beer, Baccy and Crumpet Party - Ray Hall
Christian Party - Kevin Milburn
Peace Party - Jim Duggan
English Democrats - Michael Walters
Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts - Daz Procter
Wessex Regionalist - Colin Bex
However, despite the many parties in the race, the main contenders were the Lib Dems, Conservatives, Labour and UKIP. Eastleigh had been a Lib Dem constituency since 1994, but after the Huhne scandal they had their work cut out to regain the trust of the voters. Prior to 1994 the Eastleigh seat was held by the Conservatives, so the Conservatives were keen to reclaim Eastleigh, making this a real battle between the co-alition partners and threw Eastleigh into the media spotlight. For Labour the by-election was a chance to bring their party policies south as they are typically a party more popular in the northern parts of England, and they were pushing for Ed Milibands "one nation" Labour. UKIP saw this as their opportunity to be taken seriously, as a relatively new party this was their chance to compete against the three big parties and get their policies heard.
As part of their campaign all of the parties brought out the biggest names they could to help appeal to the voters. The Lib Dems brought Nick Clegg, the Conservatives brought David Cameron, UKIP brought Nigel Farage and Labour brought Ed Miliband.
The Conservatives came under some criticism that their candidate, Maria Hutchings, was not in the media light enough and wasn't interacting with the voters. This was something I found to be true as WINOL had a real struggle trying to get in touch with her prior to the election. I managed to interview her at one in the morning, after sitting through what can only be described as the longest housing meeting ever. However she only agreed to the interview out of sympathy for our student dedication and we were warned to only ask her about the housing development. On reflection I should have just asked her about her policies anyway, what were they going to do?
WINOL produced "The South Decides" on the night which was our Eastleigh by-election special. Our show went live at 10pm until 12pm and then it transferred to the radio show until about 1am when the show went live again as the results show.
For the by-election special I produced a package on housing and I was also the political correspondent reporting from the count in Eastleigh.
Housing package:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2K2K8KNfcU
The OB Team:
Louis, Kirsty, Ellen and myself.
Unfortunately on the night things didn't go quite as smoothly as we would have hoped. Producing live OB's from the count was optimistic but we felt that we were prepared. Originally we planned to link a camera and gun mic to a laptop and use Skype, however we soon learnt that we couldn't get the laptop to register both so we decided to compromise on the visual quality by using a web cam and the gun mic. We tested this system in the news room and it worked perfectly without any hiccups so we were sure it would be fine on the night, we had even practised with the exact equipment we would be using. What could go wrong? ... Everything.
We were the first of the media to arrive at the count, despite one lone BBC camera man and his never ending collection of wires. We decided to set up immediately and make sure everything worked. It didn't. At first we couldn't get the microphone to connect to the laptop so when we tested Skype Nicole couldn't hear anything. We tested all of the equipment and it worked separately, but refused to work together. We believed the source of the problem was the wire which connected the gun mic to the USB port so Lou ran to go and buy another. Once he returned we attempted Skype again and this time the laptop wouldn't recognise the web cam. By this point time was running out and we had been forced to move from our set up point as we were in the BBCs allocated space.
After many failed attempts our only workable solution was to Skype via iPhone... professional. But we made the best of a bad situation and gave live OBs whenever we were thrown to. We also managed to announce the result, although it didn't go as smoothly as production probably would have liked. We were unsure when the results would be announced so we were dependent on rumours and guess work. When Mike Thornton was announced as the winner of the Eastleigh by-election he was greeted with a cheer and a chorus of "we like Mike". We filmed the candidates giving their speeches and we managed to get reaction interviews with all of the candidates except for Maria Hutchings who refused all media interviews.
There was a fantastic atmosphere within the count, the hustle and bustle, grabbing people for interviews, trying to get as much information as we could from people, and being a part of the media scrum. The pressure of speaking on a live OB is the scariest thing I have done and the pressure was like no other. Fighting through the sheer exhaustion and running off of nothing but caffeine really gave us the feeling of being real journalists.
I was also lucky enough to be interviewed by Sky. I expected them to ask me about WINOL or our journalism course but no, they asked me about the election and the parties policies. Fortunately I had been following the by-election religiously so I could answer their questions, but it was unbelievable terrifying. I am currently badgering them to send me the footage, so I will upload it as soon as I get it.
All in all the by-election was a fantastic experience for us and provided fantastic material for us to report on. We were incredibly lucky that it was right on our doorstep, but I don't think I will be rushing to Eastleigh again anytime soon.
An edited version of the South Decides:
No comments:
Post a Comment