Howdy ...
Just tho't I'd let you know about some recent successes, and why I haven't had time to post much.
Howdy ...
Just tho't I'd let you know about some recent successes, and why I haven't had time to post much.
A week ago last night, local HS Football (Friday Harbor Wolverines - FEAR THE PAW!) game caller Mike Martin and myself went to La Conner off-island (all away games are off-island) to remote-broadcast. We just had 4 sponsors, but ... the broadcast was a rousing success. Thanks to a couple relatively new apps, I was able to control the studio main computer to shut down its broadcaster and switch to my iPhone sending to my ShoutCast server. The result was LIVE broadcasting to the Internet and also the Part 15 AM station in Friday Harbor.
Pregame stats, half-time interview with former Jr. Tiger Football coach who's known all the players since they were very young (Jr. Tiger Football is ages 6-14), post-game interviews with coaches and players, and ads stuck into 1/4 breaks, half-time, timeouts.
We had about 15 or so listeners on the Web, and a few more on the Part 15 station. All generated from my iPhone!! Plus we won the game 32-0.
OK, ready for this? It generated much interest on FB and scuttlebut on the island. Game caller Mike Martin knocked on doors downtown, while I set up posters (we ran out and had to get some more made) or the next game. We ended up with a stat messenger (a young lady former Jr. Tiger football player), interviewees, and about a dozen sponsors (some were comp'd for providing services).
This time, i.e., LAST NIGHT, we brought the "real" gear, dual mics, recorder, two iPhones and two more cellphones, two headsets, two computers, lots more 'wire' to hook up. We did a stereo broadcast for more than two hours, with a complete segment-sponsored pre-game show, half-time show, and post-game show, ten or so blocks of tag-lined commercials, and more. At one point had 200 listeners on the web, and another 30 or so (I think) on AM 1650 Part 15 broadcast in FH. Brought in over $400 in revenue!
We lost the game 27-26 in a nail-biter, edge-of-your-seat heart-breaker (for us) on a missed extra point against a big team that outweighed ours by maybe 20 lbs average. Last year they beat us 46-0. In contrast this one was one of the most competitive and exciting HS games I've ever seen! I felt really privileged to be a part of it.
When it was over, I easily switched back to the studio computer with Jazz Classix playlist show 'til Midnight, packed up and made a run for the last ferry (35 miles).
All listeners so far reported a fun and professional experience. Mike did a fabulous job of announcing, Tylah just great on game stats (her first time), on-air interviewee Glen Harvey.
I'm putting together a podcast tomorrow. Looking to be able to cover Conference play-offs (copyrighted) if, when, and where our team plays.
Glad the ol' STL eMac stayed online. Many thanks to CLEAR and Sprint for my everyday wireless internet connections, website Shoutcast host Primcast, and all our great local sponsors.
Now I can pay some bills. I'll try to keep y'all posted on the next trip. For sure tune in on the web if you feel motivated.
Meanwhile..elsewhere in many cities and towns are local football fans wishing their local school football games were aired like before, amongst many other things.
Sad isn't it.
RFB
It's sad that those other towns don't have some one like Ken Norris around.
What's not sad is that Tiny Harbor does!
Inspiring story Ken, thanks for sharing it.
Are you keeping any audio archives of your live events?
For the last few weeks I have sadly not found the "Walkie Talkie Show" from Friday Harbor, but now we see why. Mr. Norris has been working on an even bigger project, and I really hope I can get a sound sample of the football game!
The Tiny Radio Station on a boat is a great inspiration for what part 15 can do.
I don't archive everything, but I got most of the FB game. The memory card ran out at around 2 hours, was busy and didn't see the note on the recorder until the post game show commentary was done and we started packing up. I'll set up a podcast feed a some point, throw into the Cloud.
I have been doing the Walkie-Talkie radio show regularly, start right around 12:30-1:00pm Saturdays. I always check to be sure I'm on, checking car radio or portable for AM 1650 because it gets its signal from the web ... so I know it's also on the Internet. No problems, so I don't know why you can't get it ...
What player are you using? Remember the Flash Player will quit if you open another page, so I recommend WinAmp or iTunes, plus the iPhone link for your 'smart' phone. Androids sometimes won't play if you don't have a player (should've come with its OS, tho')
It takes quite a bit o' work to get the internet signal right for the AM transmitter. Last week I accidentally goofed up the output settings and am still fiddling, trying to recover, almost there.
I prefer to keep everything in the digital domain so I can quickly nail down sources of noise. Over-modulation is an issue of course, so I use not only compression but also multi-band (audio) compression and expanding, lots of tweeking at post gain, to develop a good middle-of-the-road psycho-acoustc response, and also a de-clipping limiter at the end of the chain.
The goal is to get as much modulation as I can while retaining decent dynamics and preventing distortion for both RF frequency bleed and sending out a good middle-of-the-road overall sound.
Carl's vocals in both the studio and phone conversations are wonderful, in fact it's hard to tell the difference. Me ... If it's that good, I might consider narrowing the phone call audio, just so the audience can tell the difference. But in the case of the conference calls it's very cool, sounds like everyone is in the same room ... great goin' Carl!
"Sad isn't it."
That's your response? Good grief! Man, I hope you can pull out of this apparent blue funk. I'm out to show things aren't that dismal if one just gets up and exerts a little effort along with others ... it seems to work that way.
NOTE: I don't do this stuff alone. There is of course all of us in this group, but I'm joined and coached by other engineers, businesses in FH, enthusiastic announcers, students, technical assistance online, etc. We're all learning as we go, I'm just a part of it, which I consider both a privilege and a joy.
There is still yet a Light in the Wilderness. For myself, metaphorically, I get foot-lamps (next step), not aircraft landing lights.
200 internet listeners is impressive. Not sure if you've posted this in the past, but do you host your own server or is it hosted elsewhere? You need a big pipe to support that many.
Glad to hear that Walkie Talkie is still going.
I think a few weeks ago it started at 12 N Pacific, now it's at 12:30, which I will make a note of.
Also, at first there was a banner on the website front page boldly mentioning the Walkie Talkie Show, but the last two weeks I didn't see it.
The seas are calm.
The response is directed at the pitiful commercial stations that ignore local coverage.
I've been running local events and community calendar programs including airing little league baseball during the summer. I also run dollar-a-holler spots for a lot of mom and pop businesses.
And the reason why I said "sad isn't it"..is that it takes us flea powered irrelevant stations to show exactly what big boy radio should be doing..but they aren't, and they wont, and they don't.
That is what is pathetic. And there is some Ajit Pai fella going to revive radio by adding more power to already splatter causing stations and think that's going to make everything sunshine and birds chirping?
That is why it's sad. Not what you or I or anyone else with a Part 15 station does. It's what the big boy's and their expensive licensed to violate toys do not do that is pathetic..along with them getting away with outright breaking the law.
RFB
In general, do radio stations want more power? I suppose a 250 or 1,000 Watt station might want more power, but that requires expensive facility upgrades which might not be easy to accomplish.
It's odd that power is thought of as a solution when, as we have all said and agreed, the programming is the problem that needs fixing. No one talks about that except people not in control of radio policy.
The type of personalities needed to make radio come alive might be very hard to find, since there's been no incubating stations where personalities could flourish, and it was the sales and management executives who didn't like those personalities and didn't believe they were necessary.
I'm in an uncomfortable position at this moment, because I'd resolved not to rant about licensed radio's problems, yet I'm half-way into this. Got to stop.
At Shoutcast via Primcast. Rest assured they will charge me extra for on-demand peaks if it extends beyond bandwidth. I think those were just peaks, people checking in to see if it works or checking scores then backing out. Mike got fairly aggressive with the Pre-game and Half-time renderings of premium sponsor tag lines and such, may have put some folks off.
IOW, listenership apparently stayed pretty high most of the game, but certainly not at 200 all the time. If it continues to go up, I may have to invest in a dedicated server and unlimited access. Expensive ... about $250/mo from my current host, but it would also have podcast feed as well.
I host my streams from my home computers. I have one for my MRAM 1500 STREAM and one for my NOAA WX STREAM using ShoutCast/WinAmp.
Granted, I know I'm lucky if it can keep up with more than 15 or 20 listeners, although the stats at times show listeners up to the limit I set of 32.
I need to research the mechanism that requires each listener to have a separate stream.
Seems, like a party line, the packets could be pushed and everyone listen to the same stream. I suppose it's not done that way as it would clutter up the network. Or would it?
Seems I recall our I.S. guy complained when we set up a stream on our City Intranet that did just that.
The mechanics of "party-line streaming" as being an alternate to individual streams is a twist I do not know about.
But I have held the thought that bit-torrent might offer an economic band-width sparing way to stream.
It's kind of exciting to know just enough to have an idea what you don't know.
The Internet does not support multicast streams, unfortunately. There was a project a while ago testing it out (it requires changes to routers, maybe even new routers) but it died.
You can certainly do multicast on INTRANETS (your local area network) if you set up your routers correctly. But unless you have a large one, with multiple nodes, it's probably not worth the effort.
Ken, how do you find the reliability of Shoutcast? I may actually look into using external hosting if I bring my streaming back online at some point in the future.