In the second part of the trilogy interview, NEEV takes us through her journey to becoming one of the premier female presenters on KISS while given you potential next stars some NEEV advice.
KISSTORY Old School Garage and House Throwback Mix 01 by Neevofficial on Mixcloud
I think people can be a bit too narrow minded, they think of one course but in media you need to get experience across the board. People lack patience and they want over-night success
A BIT OF NEEV ADVICE
I always say to people that you should try hospital radio first because in my opinion, a lot of people like the idea of being presenters but we are in this culture of people wanting to become over-night successes.
Hospital radio makes you understand and appreciate what you want. It helped me know that what I wanted to do was to present in radio but also run charitable things alongside that and give back. There is nothing more grounding than visiting people on the wards and seeing the power of music for the person. It was amazing visiting the wards (because I would get their requests) and it was interesting hearing what that particular song meant to that person.
I think people can be a bit too narrow minded, they think of one course but in media you need to get experience across the board. People lack patience and they want over-night success but it is not like that you need to work your way through the media business. That way I think it gives you longevity and it teaches you respect and appreciation for what you eventually achieve.
SUNRISE TO KISS FM
Asian radio actually led me to KISS. I was the djing producer for the Rishi Rich show. It was Rishi, Jay Sean and Juggi D and they had a big show on Friday nights. They were so famous at the time they were like the Asian urban Take That. They needed someone to be there to put the music together, organise their links and organise the show. It was my dream station and dream job and it was massive.
I produced it for two years and we were nominated for a Sony. At the ceremony, I sat next to the imaging guy for KISS and he said ‘you have a nice voice’ I said ‘thank you, I do voice overs’ and the next thing I was auditioning for the Voice of KISS which I got and then I was able to land my own show.
THE SHOW/THE TEAM
The mid-morning programmes are two shows. The first two hours it is a radio show which is mainly music and content driven and I will constantly pull up TV shows and entertainment stories. The day before I will search on the internet and read the papers to see if there is a big show on TV, the hot gossip at the moment and basically what is trending at the time.
The second part of the show is purely KISSTORY driven and that is just a case of knowing the tracks that are bumping in the clubs. KISSTORY is endless and you need to be constantly on top of those tracks so you have to be a bit of a geek and listen to all those old skool albums and really understand what will make things go off-we are constantly watching twitter to see how people respond to the tracks we play. Today I found a great remix of Ready Or Not by the Fugees but a garage mix so we put that in.
I am lucky because I have a brilliant team and what I try and do is pull in as much as I can from their hard work and then give it that ‘umph’ each and every time.
The shows that run throughout the day apart from breakfast and drive time have actual on air producers. The others we actually produce ourselves but we have a big team within the office that put together the promotional material, they will write the questions for competitions-they will build the content and then provide that to me so there are at least five to ten people who work on the programme and just make each and every show such a joy to present-it’s great fun.
