Comments for Other stuff I worry about a bit

Comment on Present metadata as carefully as you present your audio by Ken Rayner

Ken Rayner — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 10:56:35 +0000

Sorry Ben, your post got caught in the WordPress spam filter for some reason.

Happy to be corrected on Capital – it was a “from memory” statement and I didn’t check that one before writing. Though I’ve just checked Capital South Coast and they’ve got title-artist. I think that’s where I picked it up from.

I also agree that the same source can be used – my point was exactly that, that at the point of broadcast it should be moulded to fit the platform.

Comment on Present metadata as carefully as you present your audio by Ken Rayner

Ken Rayner — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:32:53 +0000

These are just a couple of examples – I saw another heinous metadata crime today. If your playout system is throwing out things like:

If you tolerate this (then yo

as the song title – or:

Ironic (Clean Radio Edit)

then you need to look again at how your information is displayed.

Comment on Present metadata as carefully as you present your audio by Ben

Ben — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:24:14 +0000

Agree totally with your view that you need to take care and consider each platform when publishing metadata, although I think you can still use the same source – just apply whatever limitations you need to at the point of broadcast.

A few clarifications though – there isn’t a standard piece of software shared by the big players – certainly not used by Global anyway. The structure of messages are controlled editorially by the station themselves, so they choose how it looks based partly on listener feedback (certainly for Classic FM this is very important).

Also, Heart, Capital display their now playing information as ‘Artist-Title’, so not quite sure where you were looking. Classic FM is slightly different, but only because of the difference in describing classical music.

Comment on Why is local commercial radio important? by James West

James West — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 09:22:51 +0000

It’d be interesting to know if web sites in general get more traffice on snow days. I wonder if more people stay at home and hammer the internet while they have the chance.

Comment on Today, I shall displease “the Lord” by Tim

Tim — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:07:31 +0000

You should see American Evangelical TV if you think this is bad! At the end of the day it’s all about POWER and God is a very useful stick for those wanting power to weald!

Comment on Shorten it for them! by John Calvert

John Calvert — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:16:39 +0000

Hear hear.

I own a radio commercial production company and have been telling radio advertisers this for years.

Some listen…Some don’t !

John
http://www.airforce.co.uk

Comment on Shorten it for them! by Tim

Tim — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:02:19 +0000

How true how true – sadly now that any tom, dick or harry can make a radio ad in their back bedroom for 49 pence – quality control has gone out the window. Frankly the sales exec that allowed this should be hung out to dry for doing such a bad job for their customer.

The sad thing is that no one, including the client, will ever realise that anything was even sligtly amiss with the copy…

No wonder commercial radio is struggling to maintain its clientbase – the ad won’t work and the client will tell his/her friends that radio doesn’t work and so the cycle continues.

Now if the radio station was prepared to pay more than 49 pence for their radio ads… No I’m being silly aren’t with their declining clientbase how could that possibly be economic…

Comment on Time to simplify by Ken Rayner

Ken Rayner — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:44:37 +0000

Interesting news that the industry has announced today that it will subsidise the replacement of old FM and AM sets… just one of the points in the post above! Come on guys, there’s a few more to do yet…

http://radiotoday.co.uk/news.php?extend.5582

Comment on Assumptions are often wrong by Ken Rayner

Ken Rayner — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:19:23 +0000

Indeed – my initial point exactly. In fact, displaying “no report” has the (slight) effect of making the radio station look a little silly – haven’t they bothered to call the school? Sure, the resources aren’t there in most commercial radio stations – so the best thing to do is not to mention the schools that they have no information for at all.

On the other point made by Tom – where the best source of information might be a local council website or the school website itself – that’s just not the way it works. Both you, Phill and James Cridland of Media UK have used Twitter in the last day or so to demonstrate the level of traffic to local station websites at times like these. People just expect to be able to get the information there.

Comment on Assumptions are often wrong by Phill Clark

Phill Clark — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:36:04 +0000

Or simply display only the ones which are closed, not displaying anything else for ones unknown or open….