ENTERTAINMENT // Lachie Crampton and Will Watson are bringing their take on the world – and each other – to the air on 103.1 3BBR FM.
The pair started their fortnightly music and talk show Lachie&Will at the start of April, and have quickly found their feet at the community radio station.
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What is it like to host a show on community radio? The Baw Baw Advertiser caught up with Lachie and Will to find out.
BBA: Community radio isn’t something many people get involved in, but I hear you were interested before you even graduated from high school last year?
Will: Yeah. I remember sitting in Year 11 maths, wasting time, and mentioning the station to Lachie…
Lachie: Yeah, I never knew there was a community radio station in Drouin. Then Will brought it to my attention and I said, yeah, you know, we’re good friends, we’re keen on that broadcast journalism side of things, we thought getting something up and running sounded pretty cool.
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Will: We were probably shooting for the stars at that point in time, saying we’ll do this in a couple of years and be here and whatnot, but I think the end of Year 11 was when we started thinking we would do it. We put it on the backburner during Year 12 and didn’t talk about it until the end of last year after the exams finished. Then we were like, ‘alright, what are we going to do with our lives now? We have to find a hobby.’
Lachie: We just decided to get in contact with 3BBR and it went from there.
BBA: You have built probably one of the biggest and most active Facebook followings of any show on this station in just a few months – what kind of response have you had to the show so far?
Lachie: A lot of it has been supportive, and predominantly it has come from friends and family, but I suppose we’re probably our toughest critics. We always strictly debrief after shows and we know when we’ve done things good and when we’ve done things bad.
BBA: What have been your best and worst moments so far then?
Will: (laughs) I think we’ve got plenty of worst moments in the memory bank.
Lachie: The start to the last show wasn’t great, but we picked it up from there and the show got better on from there. Our first show didn’t run so well.
Will: Our second show wasn’t so bad.
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Lachie: We thoroughly planned that, and we got Rob Fraser, one of our trainers, to sit in with us so that brought a bit of confidence, knowing if we made a mistake he was there to help us.
Will: We had two guests who we had quite good chemistry with on that show too, so that flowed quite well.
Lachie: We used to write our shows out minute by minute, and I think our third show was overplanned in a way because we were stressing out about time a little bit. And the latest show, we just wrote out our songs and segments and just flowed from that.
Will: Most of our segments we just came up with on air.
BBA: That leads me to another question: how do you figure out what to put into your shows?
Lachie: Usually on the Sunday before the week of the show we get together and we sit there for probably a solid four hours thinking of what we’re going to put in.
BBA: Where did you get the idea for your show from? It’s probably one of the most commercial radio-like shows on 3BBR.
Will: To be honest, I don’t really listen to any commercial radio. Usually when you listen to the radio you’re in your car going to or from work, but I catch the train to and from work so I just listen to music off my phone. I have from time to time listened to overseas stations like BBC Radio 1, KISS FM in LA, but most of the time the segments we come up with are more things you would play sitting around with your mates. I certainly don’t necessarily look to other radio shows for inspiration, it’s more music we like, things we’d stuff around with mates, and…
Lachie: Obviously we also think of our audience and what would appeal to them.
BBA: So you’re aiming for an audience like yourselves?
Both: Yeah.
Lachie: Exactly. We always try to include the audience in the segments too. We’re only really starting out so we want to try to grow our fan base and feel as if the audience is a part of the show, so we love when they message us.
BBA: How much of you is in this show? Obviously you have things you’re interested in like politics and sport.
Will: Well the show’s called Lachie&Will, it’s pretty personality-driven. At the same time, we still try to appeal to the widest audience possible; we’re not playing, not that we’re into heavy metal, but we’re not playing screamo or anything like that. We do Pop Politics and the Sport Recap not only because they’re things we’re both interested in.
BBA: What’s Pop Politics?
Lachie: Both the Sport Recap and Pop Politics are a four-minute recap of what’s happened over the two weeks.
Will: I say Pop Politics because it’s the simplest bits. I try to break it down. It’s also cheating a bit for me because Lachie writes down his sport bit but my (pauses)…
Lachie: You can tell who’s the prepared one in this show.
Will: I say Pop Politics is a simple breakdown, but really it’s so I don’t have to prepare anything.
Lachie: Don’t give away the hidden secrets!
BBA: And Lachie, what sport do you look at?
Lachie: I look nationally and predominantly focus on the AFL, the NRL, the soccer and things like that, but also a touch of the local stuff in there as well.
BBA: What have you found works best in the show?
Lachie: The debate segment, the War Room, that’s in there each show, I think that works quite well.
BBA: That’s a debate between you two?
Lachie: Yes, and people who know us outside of the radio station know what Will and I are like on certain topics.
BBA: What has been the most surprising thing you’ve got out of this?
Lachie: A lady has got in touch with us about emceeing a trivia night, and that’s really cool because it shows people are listening.
BBA: 3BBR is a volunteer station and anyone can get involved. What can people do?
Lachie: There are not just on-air roles, there are technical roles and secretarial things to do. There’s always paperwork that needs to be done. And then there’s all the technical stuff that goes on behind the scenes who get people like us to air.
You can hear Lachie&Will from 8-10PM on alternate Thursdays. If you want to find out more about 3BBR FM, visit 3bbrfm.org.au.
This interview was first published in the 3 June 2016 print edition of the Baw Baw Advertiser.
