College radio stations are crap.
I’ve written about this in the blog, and am not going to discuss their merits any further. Most college stations are active about 2 days a year, if that. Only a handful (usually where there is paid staff) have anything resembling a real radio station. Most importantly, NOBODY comes to Streaming Radio Guide to find them. They google on the name of the college and go right to the web site.
Having volunteers chase down the rabbit hole hoping to find something of value is wasting your time, and just adding more work for me. So I’ve removed all educational format stations from the Needs Review page, even if you explicitly ask for them – you won’t get them.
The second change has to do with my failure to communicate effectively. So let me be more clear.
WE ARE NOT LOOKING FOR NOR TESTING STREAMS OR PLAYERS.
I don’t expect to ever resume offering player links other than a few dozen news/talk stations, and that may have been a mistake.
Since at least three people continue to add notes like “There is a new player at blah blah”, I’ve blocked adding notes about player or streams. I would rather be verifying stations than writing blog posts or writing code to block volunteers from doing things.
My bad…sorry.
“I don’t expect to ever resume offering player links other than a few dozen news/talk stations, and that may have been a mistake. ”
I somehow missed that concept and was trying to save you some work…not add to it!
I pointed out as I was shutting down the web site that everyone should start using tunein and leave this website. My opinion hasn’t changed.
At this point, I view this web site as mostly a reduced maintenance backup for when / if tunein stopped working some day. To some degree, people report they have had issues with using tunein, but they have paid staff and industry connections. I’ve never wanted to be a business.
I’m generally happy with the new helpers and that’s important to whatever I might do to keep things on life support for now.
Doing things like reading the “read this first” link in red at the top would avoid misunderstanding. We will never go back to listing 240 tested streaming links for Rush Limbaugh. Five is about the upper limit for all shows, choosing only the most reliable stations. Georestricting and migration to portable devices and in car integrated Internet streaming leaves little role for desktop PCS or stream players that require flash or Silverlight or a different app for every station. Adding further issues, Canada in the last week got very aggressive about stopping Canadians from listening to radio stations in the US. Mom & Pop stations are starting to get demands for money and legal threats.