Here is this morning’s addition to the volunteer process:
Let’s say you decided to check the Web Sites for the Classic Rock/Hits stations in New Jersey, and you are presented with this long list:
For whatever reason – you don’t know what to do, you hate Petersburg, you don’t have the time, you’re confused – and you want to “bail” on WTKU without doing anything. Just click on Ignore Station and it will go away from this list.
There is no penalty, not stigma. I would rather have you do nothing that guess or click “Accurate” just because you don’t know what to do.
This does not prevent the station from showing up in the normal station lists for you (or anyone else) – it only ignores the stations for the purpose of this list. At some point when someone does verify the station, the station will become unignored – so maybe a year down the road you’ll see it again.
Also, I’ve added a Volunteer “Menu” to point you at various things you might find interesting (but not likely).
http://streamingradioguide.com/adm/menu.php
and I’ve added the list of Most Active Volunteers back to the Untrusted Stream page so people will recognize your contribution to the process.
Here is a test for those who want a challenge
Is this the official web site for WDNG-AM 1450 in Anniston Alabama?
http://www.wdng.net/
That’s what Wikipedia says, but I’m about 90% certain it is not
It is not the official website, but there’s a catch, there is a “Listen Now” button, which opens a page with 15 station streams, any one of which wants to install an add-on for Windows Media Player Extension.
WNDG has a Facebook page, and it claims their website is http : // wndg . net
Go to their site, looks real but the web address is http://www.infignosmedia.com/
and then there’s that “Listen Now” button again.
So, it’s a Circle Jerk, right?
Don’t know – still not certain.
The strongest evidence it is real is the copyright page claims it is, but everything else feels wrong.
The most reliable marker would be the FCC requires that any radio station with a web site post their EEOC report online. Compliance is spotty – if it’s there and for the current year that’s solid proof.
It feels like the radio station (and the others in the player) “outsourced” to this marketing company, but it’s also possible they just let the domain expire.
Another trick I found recently is a country radio station in Florida is buying up expired domains of other country music stations around the country and pointing those old website names at their station. You really have to look closely.
So, for now do you attribute the WNDG website as the one at wndg . net?
Don’t know…
There are things that could be done – researching the domain registration history, looking at the Wayback machine, looking at FCC records, maybe even contacting the radio station – but with 15,000 radio stations, I can’t spend three hours trying to figure out one radio station
So this gets a bit strange. The domain is owned by this guy:
http://www.buyersusa.com/busa/consulting/who.cfm
Who has a PhD and an eclectic list of ventures , and brags about having hundreds of thousands of pages on the web. So I’m leaning even more that this is a very clever marketing strategy, which may have little to do with the radio station. He is located in Anniston, which is where the radio station is – but he is not an owner of the station. Perhaps he hypmotized the owners into letting him do the marketing for the station.
Where there is smoke…
http://www.almediapage.info/profiles/wdng.html
Charles R. Fuller is the owner of the radio station and probably the son a local politician Charles W. Fuller.
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/12/world/iran-contra-hearings-courthouse-barber-shop-drugstore-they-re-with-north-alabama.html
Here was the text from Tom Taylor’s newsletter
““To prevent the IRS from locking the property and forcing WDNG to go silent” – the wife of one of its 50-50 partners is returning his shares in Alabama-based WDNG Inc. The shares held by Francis DiPietro will be canceled, leaving longtime partner Charles R. Fuller with 100% of the company that owns news/talk WDNG, a thousand-watt fulltimer at 1450 licensed to Anniston. Like DiPietro, Fuller has been part of WDNG for about 25 years, and he tells the FCC he’s ready to take over things. This is a slippery issue at the FCC, because it gets extremely concerned when a licensee is convicted of a felony. That’s what happened to DiPietro, who was convicted last year of four counts of theft of property and sentenced to 46 months. The transfer filing carefully makes the case that since DiPietro owned just 50% – not 51% or more – he’s allowed to give up his stake under certain circumstances. He’s not selling WDNG at full market value or otherwise benefiting from the deal. And the only thing Fuller’s paying is the back taxes and penalties to the state of Alabama and the federal IRS. Fuller says he didn’t know that his longtime partner hadn’t paid taxes since 2009. Even though Fuller’s 86, he says he and his daughter are up to the challenge of running the station.”
Things started to fall apart when Fuller’s partner died about 10 years ago and her daughter’s children inherited Mom’s stock
http://www.genealogybuff.com/al/calhoun/webbbs_config.pl/read/51
JJ a Dark was the on air radio name of DiPietro
http://www.mobilitytechzone.com/news/2012/09/03/6553241.htm
So in conclusion, with my exhaustive research – I believe the WDNG.net page does not qualify as a valid page. The domain is not registered to anyone with an ownership interest in the FCC license. While it is possible that someone authorized the transfer, there is no way for me or anyone else to confirm that. The dealbreaker is the idea of needing to download an addon to listen to a Windows media stream. I can’t think of any legitimate reason for a listener to need to do that in 2014
Untrusted Stream page?
Where is that?
http://streamingradioguide.com/startingover/?p=10882
thanks
This post was added to a new category called volunteer – The existing related posts will be added to it. I’m considering creating a separate blog entirely if there is interest.
To avoid confusion, I removed most of the links for “new” volunteers. I think WesternMA may be the only person other than me who can see program schedule items.
When/if the most basic station data gets caught up, I might revisit training another “trusted” volunteer. CharlotteNC completed that process for the most important low hanging fruit – the syndicated news/talk stations . It took the better part of two days for 771 stations.
If you have an uncle with too much time on his hands and would welcome something to do, that’s who I’m looking for – not people with active jobs and family responsibilities.
How do I get to the volunteer most active page in the untrusted stream page? I’ve been clearing some of the Classic Rock stations and want to know where I stand. lol
For what it’s worth, CharlotteNC (me) had the same problem. Once you clear the station, clicking on it won’t bring up the untrusted page. So you need a bookmark to get directly to it in the future.
http://streamingradioguide.com/untrusted.php?stationid=10433
I did notice a few updates coming from you – I’m sorting out if if there are any issues (my bugs) I need to figure out.
As soon as I can, I expect to incorporate my new Trusted/Not Trusted database to make the process safer. Just because I think the server is in the US doesn’t mean it is correct.
Thank you for helping – the more help I get, the more I can use my real skills to build better tools.
Thanks for the reply. I just retired and listen to the computer when I’m on it plus I have a internet radio to listen to. The reason why I have so many updates is I listen to a differant classic rock station every day and I knew most of the ones I checked. I’ll keep on checking the c/r and then maybe get to the oldies. Keep up the fight. By the way you don’have any affiliation to Radio Locater do you because that’s where I get some of the other data.
I have no affiliation with anyone 😉 the closest I have is I share data with the ooTunes app for the iPhone / iPad.
The one thing I ask is that you do check your self to make sure the information is accurate. Sometimes other websites (particularly Wikipedia) have older data than what I have – and we don’t want to revert data back to a prior station owner of prior format. Clicking on the red history link will prevent a lot of confusion. Play close attention to things like a copyright date and the name of the station owner at the bottom of their page. There are lots of clues that you may be looking at an older version of the website and not the current version.
My standards also may be more strict than some of the others – if a radio station has an “under construction” website for a few months, I consider that to be “no web site”. If the station has no website, it has no format – no matter how many different sources say that it does.
I just went through today and cleaned up all the nostalgia / standards stations, figuring they were the low hanging fruit – stations which would go to a more contemporary music or switch to something like sports. My hunch was correct
There is a little project in this area that I’ll lay out for you. Several months ago, Cumulus media kicked Scott Shannons out the door abruptly. Scott had been the host of the relatively popular syndicated “True Oldies channel”, which was started by ABC Radio. That programming no longer exists – so any Oldies station that says it is a simulcast of the True Oldies channel is guaranteed to be wrong.
Cumukus came out with a replacement called something like “good time Oldies” which some of these stations may have picked up. Affiliate lists are known for being wildly inaccurate, so digging in and doing research often is the only way to confirm what is really on .the station. I could write programming that would just scrape the information from websites, but the result would just be a mess of inaccurate information – that’s why humans are so important.
Here is the starting point
http://www.westwoodone.com/index.php/main-menu/press-releases/485-westwoodone-launches-new-24-hour-format-good-time-oldies
Following my general approach of focusing on the important stuff first, I’ve cleared all the news/Talk stations carrying mostly syndicated programming and the major market stations. That still leaves over 3,000 not looked at in over 400 days