By Harry Spindler & Jacque Talbot
Image: @HiveRadioMCR

If you’re a student at Manchester Met, you should have heard of Hive Radio. With shows ranging from chart music and classics, to talk shows regarding the hottest topics, it’s a firm favourite with listeners.

This Wednesday, Hive Radio will have a new show to boast about. Hive Live will be focussing on sport within and outside the University.

Humanity Hallows caught up with Sam Richards, the student behind Hive Live, to have a quick chat and find out more about what you can expect from the show and why he felt the drive to create it.

What can you tell us about Hive Radio?

Hive Radio is a student run radio station at MMU. The station now runs 24 hours a day and last year was nominated at the national student radio awards for ‘most improved station’.

What was it that made you want to start up this segment?

Student sport at MMU has been crying out for decent coverage for a while now so I decided that, through Hive Radio, a live weekly broadcast would be ideal. We are so behind in this country when it comes to student/college sports. Take a look at the States; it’s massive there!

How long has sport been a passion of yours?

I’d be lying if I told you exactly when I was first interested in sport but I was very young. Growing up, football was mega – the thought of losing to the next village along was unbearable.

What’s the best way students can get involved in your new radio segment?

Students that are interested in helping me with this new segment should come to the weekly Hive Radio meetings we have every Monday at 7pm in the Union and we’ll go from there. We wil always be looking for reporters and on-air pundits for the show. Those who are interested in listening to the show can do via the Hive Radio website or, how I’d recommend, at the Union bar where the show will be broadcasted through the speakers. With a few pints and the players themselves returning to the Union after the matches, the atmosphere will hopefully be rocking.

How far would you like to connect with the MMU Sport teams? Do you play for any teams?

Twitter is the biggie these days. The majority of the teams have live Twitter coverage of the matches so I’ll be using that and with reporters at the game, I’ll be able to constantly update the listeners. I also aim to have a few of the players of the various teams to come to the studio for a chat in the future.

Do you feel that you have more knowledge of some sports rather than others?

Definitely, I want to be fair and give as equal coverage for all the sports teams as possible over the year, however that doesn’t mean I am some insane sport guru that knows everything about every sport. Hopefully over the year my knowledge of water polo and taekwondo will be mega.

How do you feel about the current mood surrounding English sports on a whole?

Baring in mind you are asking a Welshman; but it’s rather quite fickle. In this country there’s this idea that we are the best at everything but it couldn’t be further from the truth. I don’t believe there’s enough focus on grassroots sport and as I mentioned earlier compared to the US, we are miles behind when it comes to university/college sport. It should be no surprise Team GB did so well at Rio with all the funding the top athletes get, but in the days of austerity and local facilities constantly closing due to lack of funding – we need to ask whether wealth can be more equally distributed.

How would you rate Manchester as a sports based city?

Manchester I’d say (being bias) is the sports capital of the country. With the two major football clubs aside, so many sports head offices are now located in Manchester. British cycling, basketball, lacrosse, squash we even have the WORLD HQ for dodgeball in Manchester!

What sort of exciting stuff can we expect to see in this new segment?

I’m looking to bring in entertaining features, giving different sports teams a weekly spotlight and hopefully getting a few interviews with personalities across different clubs who could perhaps offer us a bit of an insight into the team and let people know how they can get involved. The show itself is more or less the Gilette Soccer Saturday of MMU sports (unfortunately without Geoff and Kammy).

Finally Sam, when can the listeners catch your show?

Hive Live airs every Wednesday 2-4pm. You can listen at hiveradio.co.uk/listen – or with a pint in the Union.

Make sure you tune in this Wednesday for the premier of Hive Live to keep up with all the sport around the University and catch some opinions on how the teams are getting on.