Prep and Show Notes

It's pretty much a requirement in radio - you need to do some show prep. For one, you need to know what you're talking about otherwise it's going to be a very boring show. I may go a bit far though, major links with notes and almost two sides of A4 per hour once the show's airing. That's insanely prepared.

 

However, there is also an ongoing argument over going in/out of songs. The official line where I do shifts is "do NOT talk over songs that end". Simple rule that I've never broken, even before I took the role on. But how do I know how songs end? Some playout systems will tell you, but that's usually unreliable at best.

 

My approach - PFL is key. I listen to the start and end of the song.  I've then got little symbols I put on the show notes to indicate how the song starts / ends. As this may be useful to some other people, here is the key:

 

Song Outros

 Song fades out.

 Song ends.

 Song ends with a sustained note.

 

Song Starts

  Song has no intro.

  Song has an intro. A number in a circle will be used to indicate the intro length.

 

In addition to the into time in seconds, I usually mark the first thing I'll say over an intro with an asterisk (*). This is quite useful to prevent me overfilling that intro. Most time, I've only got one or two lines in the intro. It allows me to enjoy the music as well. :)

Weekend On Air and Calling Out The AA!

So, I'm currently covering drivetime as well as my usual weekend shows at work just now. That means 7 days a week on air for a few weeks. It's doable and should be a bit of fun. This weekend also saw the team taking a trip down to the local highland games.  It went well enough... if you ignore answering a phone leaving the mic up in the studio. "Hello, <name> speaking...". Rather entertaining hearing it on air actually.

 

As for the AA. Well, I lost my alarm remote for the car. I could get in with the key but it set the alarm off and imobilised the vehicle. The guy turned up, used the small key (I had no idea what it was for - I bought the car second hand) on the box under the steering column and the car came to life. Ah well, you learn something new every day.

Stream Tags... The Good and The Bad

Online radio streams, you can do a lot with them. As well as carrying your station's output, you can attach all sorts of metadata. Usually you stop at Artist - Title, e.g. currently playing on my internal test stream is "Bon Jovi - Always".

 

That's the basics. At STAR we used to go a bit further with "Now Is Always by Bon Jovi followed by UB40". That's now and next which is on a par with some DAB stations. However this generated complaints! This was due to people using stream rippers and getting annoyed by the tracks getting tagged with the extra information!

 

As much as we are not to really cater for steam rippers (it does boost our listener stats though), I can't help but think we maybe went a little overboard. It also forward announced the next track which most of the time on STAR doesn't happen until the track is playing. Good or bad... you decide!

My Music Collection Is Wierd...

It's true, I've got all sorts. Heavy rock (I can't stand thrash mind you) through to the cheesiest of pop. I just heard the playout system segue Tom Jones into Van Halen into Britney Spears and finally ACDC.

 

I'm also exploring it at the moment to find out exactly what I have. What better way than AllDay DJ. I get to do a sustainer test and hear almost everything I have. So, I've scheduled a fairly random mix consisting of some categorised tracks and the "A to Z" (i.e. everything else) category. Let's see how long I can stand it...

 

I'm also facing issues with my wireless connection (still as ropey as ever) so the test box is directly wired into the router. I'm also streaming online (no, it's a private stream, I'm not going to give you access).

 

Though I did learn this week that (unsurprisingly really) you can get access to the DAB output of a station via. web stream (though it's locked down from what I hear). How did I find out - a phone call from somebody at the other end of the country monitoring the station output. Makes sense though, it is just an MP2 stream.

End Of A Busy Week

So that's it, Hospital Broadcasting week is over. I can get a rest. 9 days solid presenting... I've managed it! Not 9 days 24/7 mind you (that would be a bit mad). 7 breakfast shows and 2 afternoon. Ah well, it's done now.

 

I've also got most of the way through the team project stuff for university. The code should display and update the required information. I say "should" as the standard for accessing logs seems not to have been agreed on! Great with such little time to go... Though, a lot of it is down to the sudden major change of system more than half-way through the project.