Digital audio production company CultureCasts was set up over lunch at Northumberland’s Manor House Inn between seasoned yet impoverished media veterans Caroline Beck and John Adair.

Caroline's radio career includes a ten-year stint on the flagship BBC news programme
Today as the North East correspondent and a year working on award-winning documentary series File on Four. During this time she also worked in the United States in both New York and Washington. Other domestic programmes have included regular contributions to Women's Hour, Costing the Earth and The Food Programme. When British news became too much she escaped to Australia for six months with her small daughter and made several radio programmes in the Outback for Radio 4 and the World Service.

John relocated to the North East after 11 years of magazine and print editing, commissioning and production in London, to take up residence with his partner and pursue a freelance career as a print and website editor. He is a former editor of film business publication Moving Pictures, which was a sister title to Hollywood showbiz bible Variety. The magazine kept him on the road for much of the year, publishing daily editions at most of the major film festivals and markets in Europe and the US.