00:00So as journalists, we get extremely excited about general elections.
00:04The way I describe it to most people, it's like the World Cup or the Euros for journalists.
00:09And Kent's very much on the front line of lots of political things in our country.
00:13Certainly as we emerged from COVID, a brief sense that maybe things would get better
00:18and then the dawning reality that they weren't, that had become really the defining story in Kent.
00:24We'd had an idea that we were going to do a programme.
00:28All the reporters were assigned different counts.
00:30So we were at every count in Kent, 18 of them.
00:32So we had more than 50 journalists.
00:3412 hours of coverage.
00:35And probably if we're completely honest,
00:37we weren't as far along in that planning as we needed to be
00:39at the point when Rishi Sunak said, it's happening, it's six weeks away.
00:43Quite lucky in that Kent became such a heated point for the election.
00:48To be able to be up there with the likes of the big broadcasters.
00:53It's exciting, isn't it? Exciting.
00:55So excited.
00:57I actually really am.
00:58We did things on the night which will stay with me forever, I think.
01:02Yeah, some results were a bit ropey with the feeds dropping out and things like that.
01:08It was, yeah, it was stressful.
01:09I didn't manage to go live.
01:11It was a lot of, a lot of caffeine to stay awake.
01:15And you spoke about change there, Lauren.
01:16Sorry, Cameron from KMTV.
01:18There is something to say for journalism still at a local level
01:24and covering the general election in a hyper-local way.
01:30I think it builds a level of trust that you wouldn't get anywhere else.
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