Look behind the scenes at how local news covered the historic general election and all the eventful build up to the night.
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00:00Hello, I'm Andy Richards, I'm the channel director of KMTV and I was also the executive
00:13producer for the general election special programme that we did this year.
00:17So as journalists we get extremely excited about general elections, probably far more
00:22excited than the general public.
00:25That can be reflected in the turnout usually is quite low and it was quite low this year.
00:30The way I describe it to most people it's like the World Cup or the Euros for journalists.
00:36I'm Rob Bailey, I'm head of the Centre for Journalism at the University of Kent and on
00:40election night I was the presenter for the outside broadcast at Medway.
00:44I mean obviously there'd been frantic speculation, I mean we'd all been playing guessing games
00:49around the newsroom about when it might be, so of course when that famous moment he steps
00:53out gets rained upon and this kind of really abject kind of statement on the steps of Downing
01:00Street that he was going to call the election, I think all of us were just completely stunned.
01:03And we will have a general election on the 4th of July.
01:06And Kent's very much on the front line of lots of political things in our country.
01:10Brexit's an obvious one with our geography being close to Europe as well as Dover is
01:15obviously a key place with migrants travelling over the English Channel to our shores.
01:21The whole country's gone through this really, really extraordinary five years.
01:26We've seen an awful lot of families that wouldn't have been struggling a few years ago really
01:30starting to feel the pinch, the price of energy, the cost of childcare, these issues really
01:36changing people's lives quite profoundly.
01:38And I think certainly as we emerged from Covid, a brief sense that maybe things would get
01:44better and then the dawning reality that they weren't.
01:47That had become really the defining story in Kent.
01:51We'd had an idea that we were going to do a programme because we'd done it before in 2019.
01:56And we have reporters at all 17 constituencies to bring you the results.
02:05My name is Matt Ramsden.
02:06I'm the senior editor for North and West Kent for the Kent Messenger group.
02:11The Kent group is made up of different strands as a business.
02:14We had various meetings with all the key players involved and we came up with a rough plan
02:19of what we would do on the night.
02:21All the reporters were assigned different counts.
02:23So we were at every count in Kent, 18 of them.
02:26So we had more than 50 journalists.
02:2712 hours of coverage.
02:28And probably if we're completely honest, we weren't as far along in that planning as we
02:32needed to be at the point when Rishi Sunak said, it's happening, it's six weeks away.
02:36Day one, Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Party turned up to Gillingham Football Club to launch
02:41the entire campaign from here.
02:43Kent is very important to us.
02:45It's very important to me.
02:46I grew up on the Surrey-Kent border.
02:48I know this area.
02:49Very, very well.
02:50You know, that was an indicator of what was to come.
02:54We were right at the front there.
02:56We had two reporters.
02:58Rishi Sunak chose not to come to Kent, but we did get a cabinet visit from James Cleverley,
03:04the former Home Secretary.
03:05We had two opportunities to speak to him.
03:09A place for family, friends and the community to remember a seven-year-old boy who died
03:14after a hit and run in Sandgate.
03:16A place, while on the election trail, Home Secretary James Cleverley paid a visit to.
03:21I'm here to have a quiet conversation with Will, away from your cameras and microphones,
03:27and then we'll go out campaigning, do the political stuff elsewhere.
03:30My name's Bartholomew.
03:31I was largely in the engine room during the election, so in the gallery.
03:35I think we did such a great job.
03:37I think we were quite lucky in that Kent became such a heated point for the election.
03:42I remember there was one day where we were sitting in the gallery getting a live feed
03:46from the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, as he was visiting.
03:49We were sitting there in the gallery watching this leader take part in an assault course.
03:53Liberal Democrats have got a pretty good record here in Kent.
03:56Not amazing.
03:57They'd never held a seat before, but Tunbridge Wells was really in play for them.
04:01Our reporter, Ollie, he certainly was front and centre.
04:07How is your party going to strike the balance between recreation and conservation?
04:12It's a really important balance to strike, and the way you do it is you work with the local community.
04:17A year into the job, and within three weeks of the campaign, he had interviewed Keir Starmer,
04:24Ed Davey and James Cleverley, and he just would not have had that opportunity anywhere else.
04:30My name's Abby Hook.
04:31I'm KMTV's news editor, and a lot of my role in the build-up to the election was making
04:37sure that we were covering loads of different stories from across Kent on Kent Tonight.
04:41England scraped through, but are Kent fans still backing them to lift the trophy?
04:46Maidstone murder investigation.
04:48Swanscombe residents fearing for the worst.
04:50Lights, camera, action.
04:53KMTV prepares for largest ever local general election coverage.
04:58And I'm always incredibly proud of the team of journalists and young reporters we have,
05:02all so new, to be able to be up there with the likes of the big broadcasters.
05:09It's a privilege.
05:10It's hard work, but I think we delivered it exceptionally.
05:16How ready do you feel?
05:17How ready do I feel?
05:19With it being next week.
05:21Erm, reasonable.
05:23We've got ten, eleven different locations to be at, and we're asking all these students
05:29and these apprentices to come and help, and I haven't got a kit to give them at the moment.
05:34For me, the big story of the election was what happened with reform, because reform
05:38definitely swayed the vote.
05:40I think if you were to talk to quite a few former Tory members of parliament, they would
05:44have said if reform hadn't been a factor, they probably would have kept their seats.
05:48Maidstone has been under Conservative control since 2010 under Helen Grant, and people here,
05:54the packed out crowd who were applauding Nigel Farage's feisty speech, seem to be former
05:59Conservative voters.
06:00Yeah, yeah, you know, it was cool, I interviewed, actually I did interview Nigel Farage, he
06:04ran off before I could ask him what his favourite milkshake was.
06:07But, no, it was, it was, it's a big reform event when Maidstone is kind of pulling towards
06:14reform in a second place.
06:15So I've just finished on the box.
06:17Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine.
06:19Thanks, Olly.
06:25Understanding our audience, and understanding that the reason why people are tuning in to
06:30us is they want to know what's going on in Kent.
06:32We've got about 40 guests booked, ready.
06:36We won't be able to test until we get to the day.
06:39When the cams start coming in, all hell breaks loose.
06:42How do I feel it's next week?
06:44A mixture of excitement, surprise, anxiety, nervousness.
06:49It's exciting, isn't it?
06:51Exciting.
06:52So excited.
06:53I actually really am.
06:55It's going to be really fun.
06:57You've just got to be able to adapt on the go, nevertheless.
07:00Even though we can plan to the T's, it's all about adjusting on the day.
07:06Might do bed sheets.
07:08Well, this is the Kent Politics Show set.
07:12Next time this is up, it will be in Medway, ready for the big day.
07:18Good evening, and welcome to the Kent Politics Show special General Election 2024 Live.
07:23We did things on the night which will stay with me forever, I think.
07:27Cameron Tucker, who is there with me, is one of the reporters.
07:30Running from the car park into the main sports hall at Medway Park,
07:34where the counting was going to take place.
07:36It's going to be a great night.
07:38It's going to be a great night.
07:40It's going to be a great night.
07:42It's going to be a great night.
07:45It was a real buzz.
07:46It was a real buzz, and I think the team thought I was slightly mad when I suggested it.
07:51It was a real buzz.
07:52It was a real buzz, and I think the team thought I was slightly mad when I suggested it.
07:57But it worked really nicely.
07:58It was definitely a real highlight for me.
08:00Welcome to our studio, where Rob Bailey is waiting in place with our first guest for the evening.
08:03And, Rob, it's over to you.
08:06I'm slightly out of breath, so take it away.
08:09Thank you, Cameron, and welcome to the pop-up studio here in Medway Park.
08:13here in Medway Park.
08:15Yes, some results were a bit ropey,
08:17with feeds dropping out and things like that.
08:19Hi, yes, I'm a new sign-in.
08:22Apologies for just a few little connection issues.
08:25Audio is not wonderful, so I'll be narrating a little bit.
08:28We'll try and pick up the results.
08:29We just about got every result out in some shape or form.
08:33...has won Sittingbourne and Sheppey.
08:36My name is Ellie Hodgson.
08:37I'm one of the multimedia reporters
08:39at Kent Online and Kent Messenger.
08:40And on the election night,
08:42I had the role of covering Tunbridge Wells' election count
08:45at their sports centre.
08:46Oh, no, it was, yeah, it was stressful.
08:48I didn't manage to go live.
08:50Me sitting there with my chair and my laptop on my lap
08:54and there was no Wi-Fi.
08:56So that sort of set the tone of the evening
08:58in a way of what sort of difficulties I might encounter.
09:01I made a quick split decision to film them instead.
09:04And I'm glad I did capture that
09:05because after Mike Martin didn't want to do an interview,
09:09all of us were aghast.
09:10We couldn't believe it.
09:11It was such a sort of landslide win.
09:15And it was historic.
09:16It was the first time a Liberal Democrat
09:18had ever won a seat in Kent.
09:20And you don't want to tell everybody
09:21about how amazing that is.
09:23And I remember listening to his speech
09:24and it was just so mundane
09:26and it almost zapped all of the energy out of the room.
09:29I remember looking at the other reporters
09:31and he was saying,
09:32we're at the end of a political earthquake.
09:35We are standing in the aftermath of a political earthquake.
09:42You've got to take risks in live telly.
09:45And I think this one came off in general.
09:48And you spoke about change there, Lauren,
09:49sorry, Cameron from KMTV.
09:51And we're going straight to Tunbridge
09:53because another result is coming in.
09:57It was a lot of caffeine to stay awake.
10:02I think the later it got on,
10:04the more we realised that this is going to be a long night
10:07and it was good.
10:07We loved it.
10:08I think all of us were so just engaged
10:10with what we were doing.
10:11Feeling a multitude of feelings.
10:13All of them are some sort of variation of tiredness.
10:16It was this constant desire to do this TV,
10:19to make it as good as we could,
10:20to have the guests on,
10:22to utilise our graphics,
10:23to cut between the studios,
10:25to finally piece together this thing
10:27that we had been working on for so many weeks.
10:30And with such limited resource as well,
10:33when you think about it,
10:33when you compare it to the other broadcasters,
10:37we're a small team.
10:38But I think it's so crucial to highlight
10:42that there is something to say for journalism
10:45still at a local level.
10:48And covering the general election
10:51in a hyper-local way,
10:53I think it builds a level of trust
10:55that you wouldn't get anywhere else.
10:58We tell just as many good stories as we do distressing ones.
11:03But that's local telly.
11:04You know, we could be doing a general election one night,
11:07a story about a tortoise that's been found,
11:09and then we could be doing a murder investigation.
11:11So it's important for people to understand
11:14that it can't be free,
11:16that if we didn't do it, who would?
11:19People should be encouraged
11:21by the quality of young journalists
11:24who are still, for some reason,
11:27wanting to do that as their career.
11:30I hope people can recognise
11:32that it is an important part of our society
11:35and the information that we deliver to them is vital.
11:39And people do care.
11:41And people do care.