qualities or skills to be a radio producer.

 You need certain qualities or skills to be a radio producer. The qualities you need include the following:- (a) ability to see and hear what is happening around you. This would mean a keen desire to know more about things. We may call this inquisitiveness. Unless a person is inquisitive, he or she cannot be a good radio producer. This is because you need ideas to produce interesting programmes. How do you get ideas? Let us think. Firstly, we need to observe things to get ideas. Remember the story of Isaac Newton who observed an apple falling? This observation led him to wonder why the apple fell down from the tree and why it did not go up. The result was Newton’s gravitational theory. Let’s take another example. James Watson was boiling water in a kettle. When the steam gushed out with force, he realized that force or power could be used. The result of this paved the way for the invention of the steam engine. So you can get ideas by: 

(i) observing things as discussed above.

 (ii) drawing from experiences : We have good and bad experiences in life. People who have written stories, novels, poems and plays draw their ideas mostly from their experiences. The great poet Kalidasa saw the dying bird and its pair which was sad and took to writing poems. The English poet Wordsworth observed flowers (daffodils) dancing in the air and wrote one of the best pieces of poetry. So from our own experiences or going through the experiences of others, we get ideas.

 (iii) You have just read about the experiences of others. How do you come to know about them. Well, you need to talk to others to find out and understand their experiences. 

(b) Ability to conceptualise ideas: You may get any number of ideas, but you need to turn them into concepts and then in to radio scripts. 

(c) Creativity : What is creativity ? Are you creative? This is a quality which is found in almost everyone. But you need to be creative in putting together an idea in a manner which can attract people .Creativity would mean, doing something new or different. The same idea can be made into a radio programme differently by different people. If everyone does it in the same way, they will all be the same and not interesting. (d) A good user of words. You need the ability to use the right word at the right time in the right manner. Radio programmes depend on a good script and that depends on your ability to write well. For this you need a very good knowledge or stock of words or a good vocabulary. You have to be using words in the appropriate manner. We shall deal with this aspect later.