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Post by Deleted on Nov 26, 2015 17:34:29 GMT
For reasons of our own nature as a social animal we feel better if someone listens to what we transmit.
Programs sent by "intentional radiators" under Part 15 may or may not be received by folks within range, and we only find out if some of them contact us and admit having listened.
Streaming stations are better able to measure connections to their servers, but may never know if the computers at the other end are actually listening to the audio being sent. They could be copyright trolls checking on your music license, competitors sniffing you out, the government checking on political content... doing an accurate "listener count" for reporting purposes is impossible because there's no way to verify the unknown.
Even true stream "listeners" may not be listening.
I learned that family members who tuned in for something I wanted them to hear made the connection but then went out to walk the dog.
A neighbor that connected admitted that she kept it on for her cat while she went out.
I've talked to people who took phone calls or held conversations at their end with my stream playing unheard in the background.
All this explains why I view my station as, well, my station... it's there for me. I am the listener.
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Post by Admin on Nov 27, 2015 4:40:53 GMT
Yes, I've always said "I'm my own best listener."
And funny, it is an obsession keeping the station on air and/or streaming when I know most likely no one is listening.
I guess I do it on the chance that someone will hear it. And yes, when you do receive a note from a listener that actually heard your station it is utter delight.
But, ya know, I don't get hung up on "how many listeners do you have?" Matters not. I just like to keep it going.
After all, I'm my own best listener...
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Post by thelegacy on Nov 27, 2015 23:57:23 GMT
I didn't really know anyone was listening to my FM signal when I first came on air and I walked down the street and I was so happy I got Range with my transmitter. The law firm next to me had a very nice dude that saw me and heard the music playing on my Radio. He asked me what I was doing and I told him I was testing my FM transmitter. He was very interested and wanted to know my frequency. I told him at the time it was 96.3 before having to move to 87.9 due to the issues with the temperature inversions. Well apparently he did follow me down there. Months later I didn't think anything of it till the day I was having issues with paying my electric bill and we'd be without power and in the cold and of course NO FM STATION and the Internet side would be on Auto Dj till I got the money to get the power back on. I did a donation pledge and got $115 from that person who heard me come on Air June 5th 2015. He absolutely loved my station and was listening on the Internet as I advertised on the FM transmitter from time to time. FM does get listeners and this is why I am so much for the initiative. Here we can talk about it hopefully without hassle and maybe with some people participating. We'll see here at the ALPB.
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Post by bluebucketradio on Nov 29, 2015 21:34:50 GMT
In the immortal words of Alfred E. Neuman "What Me Worry?"
If i get listeners Great! If not , Eh. It's my hobby station and you're welcome to listen, or not.
That's my take on it all.
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Post by bluebucketradio on Nov 29, 2015 21:54:29 GMT
How many of us here remember using pirateweather.com? (link won't work, unless you use the wayback machine) I for one miss that website. For those who are not familiar with it, let me break it down for you. You would type into your browser the url i wrote above, the pirateweather.com website would open and you enter the zip code for your area. Mine would be 41723, then a new window would load and bam! You would get not only a text version of the weather forecast for your town but a text to voice wav or mp3 version of the weather forecast to include in your programming. And it was handy to have the weather updated in Zararadio. If i knew how to do all that, I would build a website that does the same thing pirateweather.com was doing. A missed resource indeed. |
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Post by Admin on Nov 30, 2015 3:23:02 GMT
I got very used to using our local NOAA weather service which provided mp3 downloads of all the various forecasts for the area.
One day I noticed the forecast was a few days old. When I checked with NOAA I was told, they decided to discontinue the service. What a pain, it worked great with automated players like ZaraRadio as the file could be played as needed. Using automated downloading, the NOAA forecast was downloaded every half hour to make sure I always had the latest forecast.
I used it on my Part 15 AM and FM, the City's AM TIS and LPFM.
Oh well. If nothing else it has forced me to open the mic and produce my own weather updates. I try to do it twice a day, morning and evening.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2015 15:10:22 GMT
Whether Weather
KDX has considered the idea of doing a daily roundup of bad weather, but...
If it's for the immediate part 15 intentional radiated area with only me listening I'd already know the weather before hearing it on KDX.
If it's for streaming listeners on the internet, where to draw the line? Should it be U.S. only? Maybe North America only? Oceans? Continents? Top 10 big cities of the world?
Maybe the ALPB will have the answer.
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Post by bluebucketradio on Dec 1, 2015 11:18:18 GMT
I had a thought the other day after posting this thread, I have NOAA programmed into a scanner and it is being rebroadcast over 530 Khz.
The idea was to carry the weather on a radio for the immediate area since the TH 5.0 seems to only cover 100 feet then that would be immediate enough but then i had that AH HA moment. Zararadio has those nifty satellite settings, why not take the 530 signal off the air and save the TH 5.0 for a back up transmitter.
Then i would have the scanner available to dedicate a satellite channel on Zararadio to pick up the forecast for the listening area and it would fire up whenever i have that programmed to play. I do want to do some live and pre-recorded material throughout the day, but there are going to times I can't be here, Zararadio could take care of the weather for me.
Another option and I haven't tried it yet, Audacity has a timer record function but i don't know if it will save the file after the timed recording is finished.
If it does, that file could be saved to a specific folder and then played by Zara.
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