Strong and Stable Livestream

Strong and Stable Livestream
Genre:	Political, Event Coverage
First Broadcast:	08/06/2017
Producer(s):	Katherine Bell Edwin Barnes Joel Mitchell

Strong and Stable was the name given to YSTV's overnight coverage of GE2017 with The Lemon Press. It was envisioned as an alternative and comedic take on the elections. As Katherine Bell pointed out: "If people want serious, they'll watch the BBC". The multiple livestreams streamed on both YSTV and Facebook live in 3 increments at 10-12pm, 1-3am and finally a more serious political debate show from 4-6am. It was named after the popular 2017 meme about Theresa May's 'Strong and Stable' leadership and the joke that YSTV streams were rarely strong nor stable.

Pre-Production

There were vague intentions to cover the elections since the current PM Theresa May unexpectedly called the election back in April 2017. However since the election was called for June 8th just after exam season, pre-production was put on the back-burner until anyone could be bothered. Turns out no one really could, so much like the election campaigning itself it was quite a last minute affair. There was a compilation video of YSTV's political content of 2017 created by Raquel Bartra to advertise the stream which was released on YSTV facebook before the show. Purposefully bad graphics were also created by Emily Friend to advertise the stream on social media. An example of the horrific colour scheme and ironic use of comic sams can be seen in the logo recorded here.

The Lemon Press (York's answer to The Private Eye) were invited onto the project to provide VTs, presenters and general anarchy. There was a very productive meeting with our lemony partners where the general outline of the show was discussed. From this meeting it was decided Tom Lee would help The Lemon Press film VTs with our green screen in the studio. Spoiler alert: Most of these ended up being unbroadcastable. One of the skits about the Queen was bordering on treason so there was some trepidation for the actual live show.

Edwin Barnes booked YourSpace for the night, intending to set up the OB hours before we went live.

The Day of Livestream

The day of the election stream was at the end of the infamous week of hell from 2-9th June where there was a production every single day. Therefore, everyone was a bit fed up and there wasn't much going on until around 6pm on the night. Since we were supposed to go live at 10pm it was decided there wasn't enough time to set up an OB in YourSpace and the studios would have to do. There was then a rush against time to build a decent-ish set with two a red sofa, an armchair, setboard, photos of politicians, a precariously hung glowing "On Air" sign with "Just About" written above as well as multiple balloons. Hui-Ling Phillips, Katherine Bell and Raquel Bartra went to Aldi to procure catering as there was a huge crew arriving.

The Show

The show was a mixture or farce and serious politics there were games such as

Political Twister (party seats matched the colour spots)
If I were PM (an improv exercise for our presenters where they played PM and Interviewer)
Feed the Crisps to Theresa May (as it sounds)
Tracey or Trump (where the presenters had to guess whether the quotes onscreen where from Donald Trump or Tracey Beaker)

There were many running gags in the comedy shows from 10-12pm and 1-3am presented by Andy Tallon and Josh Chapman. These included:

A loud MLG horn patched through to the studio whenever there was a seat won (to the constant surprise and annoyance of the presenters). The Director on shift would then give the details of the seat won over comms to be reported while the LED lights would change the colour of the set boards to the wining party's colour.
The presenters getting progressively more intoxicated and bewildered by the antics of The Lemon Press
A bin which had been labelled 'Jeremy Cor-bin'
A shoddy green screen constructed in the break between the streams onto which twitter memes and graphics were chroma keyed
A terrifying clown mask and other props and costumes found in YSTV's bottomless props draws
Directors trying to trick the not so politically informed presenters into announce fake results such as "Hugh Janus" having won a swing seat for Labour

The show from 4-6am was produced by Joel Mitchell and invited political commentators from many student political parties and publications to comment on the results and predict the nature of the hung parliament which was beginning to become inevitable. This show has a more reserved set up with 5 stools set up around a screen where two presenters and 3 guests (around 10 guests swapped throughout the two hours) discussed the night. This show utilised VT footage from YSTV's previous coverage of the election period including our coverage of the Corbyn rally and an exclusive interview with Boris Johnson. Joel Mitchell and Benjamin Whybrow held the show together by producing, presenting and researching on iPads live on air as comms were temperamental at best.

Awards

The Strong and Stable livestream was shortlisted for and won a 2017 YUMA for best entertainment to the surprise of everyone involved. Especially as YSTV had also been nominated in the same category for Behind the Streams