This web site has a few purposes since its inception around 2004:
– provide a list of AM, FM, and TV stations and links to associated web sites
– provide links to the players for stations that stream
– provide programming schedules for stations that have regularly scheduled programming
Since then, a lot has changed:
– the number of streaming stations went from a few hundred to 11,000 (2/3 of all licenses)
– the majority of streaming listeners now use mobile devices (iPads, phones, etc)
– the iHeartradio and Tunein apps permit access without using the desktop players
– desktop players have become bulky complex video ad players
– Barack Obama became ruler of America
– independent syndicated programming has disintegrated
– there is very little interest in program schedules other than Conservative talk
– few people come here to find local shows – other than major markets
– Windows XP support is ending – which will make my research tools (written in the 1990s) too dangerous to continue to use
– talk radio is increasingly not interesting to me
I don’t see much benefit to spending most of my remining time on earth doing things like looking for the 762 stations that upgraded from abacast 5.0 to 5.1 (one at a time)
The conclusion I’ve come to is that it is time to pull the plug on item #2 – I am going to stop the maintenance of the player links and direct you instead to the station’s home page. You’ll still see that Rush Limbaugh is on WOR-AM from Noon-3PM ET, but to listen to it, you’ll have to visit the WOR web site and find the iHeart player link there. That will make the station happier – and generally create a more reliable experience. At least for now, I’ll probably retain any simple mp3 playlist links (.pls, m3u) that are useful for wifi radios – the station knows you aren’t using a browser or app to access the stream.
For probably three years, I do almost all program verification (the 3rd item) using the ooTunes app on the iPhone/iPad, which means the “quality ratings” (the color of the buttons) are less than meaningful. That goes away too.
One consequence is people will probably begin to bookmark stations and go there directly, which will reduce traffic here – and over time make the popularity ratings less accurate. That also may decrease the visibility in Google.
In the past I’ve mentioned removing schedule items where syndicated shows are available free from the syndicator – live and/or on a 24/7 Internet loop. People (especially those who work in radio or used to) feel a strong attachment to specific local radio stations – but it is getting clearer and clearer that programming delivery and over the air radio are becoming less and less connected.
Opinions?
You’ve already made it clear, that the flags at the Art Stone household are at half-staff for the once-great genre known as, “conservative talk radio”. Shortly, this may become to be known as “tea party talk radio”, as the repugs look and act more like “democrat lite”, as the years pass by. Most of the die-hard hosts that used to carry water for them, now can’t help but mock the republicans. Many of the best hosts are in their mid-60’s to early-70’s, and won’t be around 10 years from now, anyway.
My problems with the site are:
a) the page design is too “old School”.
b) the page design puts too much of a burden on users to search for stuff. (“users”, being a euphemism for “short-attention span Americans, who couldn’t possibly be
bothered with scrolling down pages this long.)
c) the most popular shows that people visit here to see are not featured prominently, but are shuffled in with all the other hosts. If you know for a fact that 92% of your listeners are visiting to listen to no more than 20 shows – then links to those shows should be visible the second the webpage loads.
I am an avid talk radio listener, and I’ve settled into a routine of 6-8 streams, most people only need 1-3 streams, anyway.
All independent websites and blogs will eventually fade because there’s too much of a burden on one or two operators, who also have a lives to lead at some point. Couple that with the smartphone/podcast revolution, and your announcement here comes as no surprise.
I have been astounded by the amount of work that has gone into this labour of love. However, but if one stood on a street corner in a major city for a week, and asked 10,000 passersby who “Dave Graveline” is, or for what occupation he may be known for, would you find even one among them, who knew or even cared? It’s simply not worth all of this work you’re putting into it. Outside of documenting history perhaps.
But the years fly by, and anyone under the age of 40, couldn’t care less what impact Frankie Crocker had on radio history, or about those of us who can remember when “Three Dog Night” was played on the radio every five minutes. “Jeremiah was a bullfrog?”…yawn.
Two of the internet radios in my home use Tunein for both finding programs, and for the audio stream links. They have a Tunein app that links to a fixed Tunein link for the station, and that link dynamically redirects to the stream. When the stream changes, the re-direct changes but not the Tunein link. Problem is that Tunein will not redirect to most USA streams if the radio has a non-USA IP address.
Bottom line is that I will not miss your player links. I enjoy the chat here.
Have you considered a blog similar to this but where each show and each station is a constant/fixed topic. Maybe I want to read each and everything someone has to say about WABC, or about Sean Hannity, or some local show on WABC, etc. This forum is nice, but topics are too transitory. You could do the same for formats, “alternative rock” format, “folk” format and “liberal” talk format, for example.
I played around with that idea a very long time ago with no results. I can’t even get people to enter the topic of the show, let alone talk about it. People listening on delayed broadcasts are yet another complication. As it turns out, the bulk of people listening to Savage are listening from 9 pm to midnight, not when the show is live.
I wouldn’t use it for the topic if today’s show so much as a comparison of hosts. If I like Savage, who else should I listen to… if I dislike Savage, who else should I avoid? Thank kind of thing.
Another of my abandoned projects – it’s still there, but I don’t have the Amazon “magic”. I did create an “If you like this, you might like that” function and played with it for a bit.
But since there are less than 20 syndicated hosts that have a significant audience, that doesn’t seem very useful. I don’t have enough data to reliably say “If you like Phil Valentine, you may like Mindy McConnell” (A local host)
You could try to direct people to a handful of syndicated hosts, or direct them to local talents like Mindy McConnell (any relation to Mitch?).
What about BlogTalk? There are a number of people I listen to there.
James Golden left Rush about 15 years go thinking the future of radio is talking to a chat room with 10 people in it. He eventually asked Rush for his job back.
I look at time to time at Shoutcast as a barometer on non-radio streaming.
http://www.shoutcast.com/?action=sub&cat=Talk#282
Alex Jones is the only person who has a consistent audience – but in a country with 320 million people and a world of 6 billion, getting 5,o00 people to listen to you isn’t even a pebble in the ocean to influence public opinion or pay the bills. Podcasts perhaps.
One of the radio consultants uses the term the infinite dial to discuss the big challenge. When “radio” is not constrained by a small number of government issued licenses, the number of entertainmnt options grows to the point that the audience is so fragmented, eventually nothing has critical mass. That’s part of why HD radio and the AM expanded band went nowhere. More choices doesn’t translate to more revenue.
Bringing in the local hosts would be a real value added.
I think about this “creature of habit” thing involving the public often. Although Savage has moved to afternoons, plenty of people still want to hear him at the hours they’ve been listening to him for years. Although Hannity and Limbaugh have flown the coop to WOR-AM in New York, WOR’s ratings have not seen a corresponding boost, because people are still accustomed to tuning into WABC, which has been their habit for years…
People who understand the old school radio know the value of having stations on the buttons of a car radio. Few people toggle over to AM and fewer yet have WOR on a button.
When Rush and Hannity vanished one day from WABC, I’ll guarantee many of those folks flipped to FM and aren’t coming back. NPR affiliates keep adding share. But share doesn’t say if the pie is shrinking or the distribution of listeners is thinning during midday.
That is where SRG can provide value. There are some people that like to listen to Savage in his old time slot- maybe they are not home and available to listen until then.
Having a schedule that shows where to listen to Savage (and others) at any hour of the day is one of the most useful features of SRG.
I will echo a few of the thoughts expressed here, but of course I (thankfully) do not run the ‘show’. I remember when you were going to ‘close shop’ a few years ago, but did not, but I believed you were closing so I stopped visiting. Then one day I happened to click the streamingradioguide, and the site popped into view. That was the day I decided to ‘join’ and started responding to your blogs, and I have been a happy camper ever since.
Now, the idea of becoming ‘outmoded’, sorta like the horse ‘n buggy days, has been over emphasized. Guess what? There are still places to visit where you can still ride in a buggy whilst there is someone to ‘whip’ the horse!!! Of course that costs a lot more money than it used to cost. So, moral of the story is that some things never go completely out of style if it touches the ‘soul’ of a person.
That is what you have going on here, Art. A place where we can come to exchange ideas and opinions. And, truth is, it is one of only a few places where ‘trolls’ are non-existent. Bravo to you for keeping things the way they are, and should be kept. A friendly place that will accommodate my quirky ideas, even if they are grounded in reality.
It’s like Cheers, except no body knows you real name. 🙂
Yeah, it keeps the embarrassment level to a minimum.
Until someone types your real name. Not that it is is hard to find if you have the most basic knowledge about the internet.
yep, I agree CC. I kinda likened it to my favorite pair of Carhardt jeans that are so comfortable.
Besides, ‘you guys and gals’ are my friends : )
The polls are awesome. Watboa is a hoot, when he shows up.
guess I have been showing up here sine 2007, when mega company closed our office and I had to start working from home. Local cumu-lost radio sux and I found SRG.
It didn’t have ‘flash’ , fast to load, no pop-ups, it didn’t have flash.
It still dosn’t have flash, and I am thankful to you for that. I would subscribe to your site, if there were a fee.
Use it everyday, but I’m old, will be 50 this year. But I have read Parrotts live a long time. I hope so, LOL
The attention to detail is awesome, and I do look at the transmitter sites link.
I admit it, I do use the links to the stations, and I use a PC exclusively. Its nice to click on it when I have to travel for work, kinda feels like home. I get a lot of my news from SRG.
SRG looks good to me, I like to scroll down a page.
Screw those attention deficit disorder pages like the blaze. I go there very seldom, cause it load all kinds of turds on the computer. That’s another reason this site is awesome. I’ll stay as long as you let me.
parrott
I would stipulate (and have) that the format of the web site is not current. It barely uses CSS, only minimal javascript and nothing based on XML, SOAP, XHTML – not a speck of Flash, etc…
A part of the “why” is search engines don’t understand graphics. If people don’t find the site in Google, it doesn’t matter how good it looks.
I started playing around with SOAP (partly because it would be a useful skill on a resume :)) – this is the piece of magic that could allow keystroke by keystroke predictive search like Google has… You type in m…i…. I give you a drop down list (probably sorted by popularity)…. Mike Savage, Michael Medved, Dennis MIller, Stephanie MIller…. and as you type more characters the list gets shorter.
If I’m not spending time maintaining player URLs, that would free up time to do programming (and play candy crush of course)
Microsoft may have blinked ?
http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/arch…indows-xp.aspx
Microsoft has announced the Windows XP end of support date of April 8, 2014. After this date, Windows XP will no longer be a supported operating system*. To help organizations complete their migrations, Microsoft will continue to provide updates to our antimalware signatures and engine for Windows XP users through July 14, 2015.
Non -issue
parrott
I don’t believe Microsoft is going to kill XP, but I have to act based on the assumption they will. The reason is their business customers, not me. Companies that have a large installed base of windows based applications have a horrible migration problem. Many existing computers can’t run Windows 8.1. Upgrading to 8.1 means lots of stuff will break, and everything has to be tested. Employees have to be retrained.
I curtailed my testing as I have been worried about malware. I listen to a couple of links during the work day, but as I grew tired of some hosts, I often click to a local stream which I could probably find here if I weren’t lazy.
I like the blog. I like the polls. I enjoy the witty repartee. Old fashioned looking? Maybe, but I like it.
I believe you have a core of followers who would do what is necessary to keep this place alive and healthy.
And that concern is well justified. Radio stations have a nasty habit of putting their format or frequency in the domain name or change call letters only to be cool. Frequently, they immediately cancel their old domain name and it gets picked up right away.
Radio stations also frequently are in attentive to their servers and lack the technical skills to prevent the attack, realize they have been attacked and protect their visitors. On the other hand, if Target can’t protect their customers, it’s hard to expect a shoestring operation to know how.
One option I’m mulling over is to swap computers – boot the system from the current XP box (the Fedora system boots from an external hard drive and then use the eMachine as God intended – as a Win7 machine. I doubt the tools will work, but at least I would have a more secure box for browsing using the HTML web based replacements.
As I’ve been reminded, the version of Fedora is so old that it probably is impossible to upgrade to the current version. While I might grumble about XP pulling the plug after 15 years, Fedora pulls the plug once a year and they aren’t cosmetic changes. If you go a year without upgrading, you’re SOL.
I agree, briand75…Art has hardcore followers. While I very seldom post here in the blog, I don’t believe a day goes by that I’m not on SRG…my home-away-from-home for the last several years.
I know this has been a lot of work for Art and a job well done. I do hope it will continue in some form.
I use this site to find different radio markets to listen to a variety of info. I HEART (hate) RADIO is garbage. I cannot stand their craptastic pop culture updates clearly geared toward people young enough to be my kids. Whenever possible (increasingly difficult) I look for links completely unaffiliated from I HEART; I hate it that much.
I am also with Art in finding less and less to enjoy in syndicated radio, so whenever possible I also listen to local shows from around the USA. I love being able to do that. I live in Virginia, so it’s cool to listen to stations in Idaho or Maine and get some of their local flavor. Whatever you decide to do, Art, is your own business. God knows I can’t beat the STG subscription cost.
I also hate with a passion the Fox News Radio on the hour updates. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting older, but I can actually smell the bullshit being shoveled at my head by the entire mainstream media “news” cartel.
Each day I mourn a little deeper for Paul Harvey.
It’s not just you. I really dislike the young woman giving the weekend box office results. If I were king, I would drop the bottom of the hour updates entirely. There is very little breaking news people don’t know about within a few minutes. But put the time back in the program, not more commercials.
The whole concept of hourly news I believe was a dictate from the NAB’s Standards and Practices – whose members just happened to also have network news services for sale.
I like the hourly news updates… but everyone has a cell phone nowadays and the updates are not really necessary.
Listen to George HW Bush talk about fighting drugs back on April Fools Day 1971 – it is in the very first minute of this audio clip….
http://airchexx.com/mp3/2009-Adds/Rewound09/Dan4-1-71-3pm.mp3
Jerry del whatshisname is floating the idea tha Clear Channel is about to dump their traffic reporting company. If I had Waze running on my car’s screen, why would I want to hear a verbal description on the 8s rather than a real time visual display?
I hate change!! 🙁
> “I hate change!!, kevydem.”
Amen,
parrott
Especially those pennies… can’t even buy a gum ball with them. 🙂
So when I do this, expect a few people coming here to complain 😉
No complaints here. Thank you for your service Mr. Stone. You have done a terrific job as things are changing almost hourly any more, no form of apologies or explanations are really needed. There was a hiatus, a time ago for you and we all managed to get by. I appreciate your honesty and being so up-front with us.
Do what you need to do and once again, thank you. It’s been a pleasure recommending this site to others.
And as my generation’s poet of note (Bob Dylan) sang… “for the times, they are a changing.”
Steve
Hard to say Mr Dylan is overrated despite all the attention he got. Aside from being a great poet, he was a great story-teller. He found a way to say so much with so few words. Here is one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite ballads:
“She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced
I helped her out of a jam, I guess
But I used a little too much force”
http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/tangled-blue
” like a complete unknown” one of my favorite Bob Dylan stories (not one he wrote)
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/bob_dylan_stopped_by_long_bran.html
The Tom Taylor newsletter today is full of information about how Clear Channel is firming up their future in Spanish language programming.
With only a few exceptions, I’ve noticed that Spanish language stations go away very fast. When the listeners remit all of their income back home to Mexico and live 100 people in a two bedroom house, it’s not a demographic most advertisers are willing to pay to attract
No doubt Art, complaints will be inevitable. So, my next suggestion is to add a toll-free complaint line…1-800-Kiss-my-Grits.
Polly Holliday moved to New York in the 1990s and is still alive. Probably not easy to find grits there.
Grits are an ‘imported’ item north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Even in NJ they are… it may be surprising to some, but much of New Jersey is south of the Mason-Dixon line.
And hush puppies are fuzzy shoes
Yeah, they eat fuzzy shoes north of the line instead of grits…..
Have you tried ‘Boxworld’ ? might be a less invasive game than the ‘candy crush’ IPO .
parrott
Level 398 finished!
You are a true ‘Renaissance man’ Art.
Parrott
I am a man of many talents. Well, at least two I can think of.
The deed is done. Let the fun begin.
I haven’t removed any data, so this is reversible – but the longer the data isn’t maintained, the bigger a problem it becomes.
If you click on the new replacement link, it behaves from a statistics point of view as if you had clicked on the old listen button, at least I hope so 🙂
One of the side effects of this is that anything related to filtering by player type is going to no longer make sense.
No major glitches at the moment. I’m going to sleep shortly, so don’t expect to see my “face” before Rush is over. A lot of people are registering for the blog, but not submitting comments. I’m not sure why. If the registration messages aren’t going out or something, drop me a line at streamingradioguide at gmail
Based on the number of new signups and their email and user names, I suspect an attack is imminent, unrelated to the changes. I recently allowed Google to start see the blog. Probably a mistake 🙂
Oh my!
https://www.google.com/search?q=CC1s121LrBGT
Yep, It’s all ruined now I tell ya……this used to be a good place to hide out from those creepy spiders and other things that crawl around in the dark.
Yeah, big mistake to let ‘you-know-who’ find your site….
Well if the site goes down anytime soon, we’ll know the attack was successful, but hope it isn’t.
I have to figure out how to save yesterday’s cache in Firefox.
Hmmmmmm
parrott
Don’t waste your time. The listen button bounces off the web server. Depending on how many people are just using bookmarks, I plan to redirect everything to the station’s home page.
The times, they are a’changin’
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-03/martin-armstrong-warns-2016-constitutional-convention
The unbalanced story leaves out a few important details.
This specifically is a call for a Balanced Budget Amendment – the language of which is deliberately easy to circumvent by Congress.
Temporarily putting aside whether states can or have revoked their call for a Convention (17 have and a few voted a second time) and whether the Amendment would work or whether a Convention could be limited to only the specific amendment authorized by the states…
If you want to play Chess and not shooting craps, you need to have a clear objective in mind, and if that fails have a plan of how to retreat. Combat plans never survive following first contact with the enemy. And who or what is the enemy?
The Original Constitutional Convention was justified out of thin air. The Articles of Confederation required unanimous agreement to amend. Rhode Island refused to participate. The call for a Convention was from a meeting where a number of states were not even present.
So what is it we want?
– Dissolution of the Federal Government?
– revocation of the ability of the Government to issue debt?
– dissolution of the Federal Reserve and its ability to print dollars?
– replace the Constitution with a more modern one?
– Repeal of Obamacare?
– clarify anchor babies aren’t citizens?
– Barack Obama removed as President?
Once you figure out what it is you (we) want, it requires that 38 states agree to the change(s) – either by passing them state by state or doing so at a meeting (repeal of prohibition was done that way)
Most of the possible motivations above are a direct confrontation on Federalism and Centralized control and government funding. It’s a mistake to assume that Republicans in Congress will do anything to advance this. They will work instead (if pushed) to pass something meaningless to diffuse the anger that has no chance of actually changing anything.
Let’s say Republicans at the State level (and maybe even a few Democrats) agree on a real plan. Each State gets 1 vote. If 13 states say “No”, nothing happens other than giving Fox News something to talk about 24 hours a day. If a balanced budget amendment forces an end to Medicaid funding, but not repeal of the law, now States have to come up with $300 billion in new taxes. Don’t lob a cannonball into Fort Sumter unless you’re prepared for the consequences.
We can have MSLSD running one side of the room and Faux News running the other.
On a serious note, have you tried the new cable new channel yet? I watched a bit for the first time yesterday and it is quite good- they spent only a few minutes on the missing plane and had real news. They are on Verizon FIOS and a few other cable outlets and seem quite good. They have a lot of AP video and seem to save money by not flying reporters to Australia to cover the search and to Fort Hood to stand in front of the gate for a live shot.
I found they steam on line for free and are from the Washington Times.
http://media.oann.com/
Let me know your thoughts. (Art, Nidster and Parrott – that means you! ) 😉
CC, so long as folks who are accessing 90% of REAL news from alternative sources then beware. But, since you are one of those who can ‘read between-the-lines’ then 30%-%40% from those sources should do fine.
Besides, it is mostly our ‘beliefs’ that make the biggest difference in what any of us choose to ‘believe’ in.
I’ll listen to that source and let’s see what happens. Thanks!
OK, CC. Good find!!!
This video streams really good from my backcountry location, and more importantly it is a refreshing change from the insipid ‘not-news’ being broadcast from the Establishment.
Thanks for the heads-up!
The first video I clicked on was the exclusive interview with Newt Gingrich. It had a serious lack of production values. It reminded me of a high school AV club project, holding a microphone in his hand and moving it back and forth.
TV went off track when the reporters put their face on TV. Getting “face time” became more important than the news.
There is some merit in “knowing” the reporter – so you recognize they aren’t just a propoganda agent dropped in by the CFR pretending to be a “journalist”, but even that’s a fuzzy line.