I know I sound ungrateful at time about the issue of testing, but this recurring problem really pisses me off. This is the “testing” done by one person in one hour. By the time I noticed them, they had done over 600 tests.
+---------------------+------------+--------------------------------+-------------+ | notetime | streamname | ShowName | time | +---------------------+------------+--------------------------------+-------------+ | 2011-09-21 09:12:10 | WMOV AM | 1360 Live | 43 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:12:59 | KLIX AM | AM Idaho | 22 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:13:45 | CRN #1 | Barry Farber | 28 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:14:33 | CRN #1 | Doug Stephan's Good Day | 22 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:15:12 | CRN #5 | Doug Stephan's Good Day | 23 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:15:52 | KSBN AM | Doug Stephan's Good Day | 32 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:16:21 | Lifestyle | Doug Stephan's Good Day | 21 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:17:02 | WHIR AM | Duke & the Doctor | 22 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:17:46 | WRWH AM | Duke & the Doctor | 26 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:18:40 | WFED AM | Federal Drive | 41 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:19:29 | WTKI AM | Fred Holland | 41 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:20:32 | WOKI FM | Hallerin Hilton Hill | 42 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:21:20 | WSMN AM | Jeff Santos | 27 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:22:17 | KJCK AM | KJCK First News | 42 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:23:08 | KDUZ AM | Local Morning Show | 26 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:24:38 | KFGO AM | Local Morning Show | 48 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:26:06 | KTRH AM | Local News | 44 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:27:45 | WFTL AM | Local News | 25 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:29:34 | KFYR AM | Local Talk | 44 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:31:01 | KLXX AM | Local Talk | 30 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:33:00 | WSAU AM | Local Talk | 70 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:33:36 | WTAQ AM | Local Talk | 26 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:36:51 | KWBC AM | Lynn Wooley | 22 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:38:37 | KWBC AM | Lynn Wooley | 93 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:39:19 | WVON AM/HD | Matt & Perri | 27 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:40:08 | WNTK FM | Money Matters | 32 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:40:56 | WTKS FM/HD | Monsters | 41 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:41:49 | WLTT FM | Morning Beat | 44 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:42:53 | WFMN FM | Paul Gallo | 42 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:43:33 | WTRH FM | Rick & Bubba | 22 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:44:06 | WROK AM | Riley & Scot | 26 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:44:48 | WNRP AM | Rob Williams | 33 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:45:27 | WORD AM | Russ & Lisa | 25 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:46:19 | WURD AM | The WURD (Philadelphia) Mornin | 23 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:47:22 | KMOX AM/HD | Total Information AM | 47 Seconds | | 2011-09-21 09:53:41 | KWOS AM | Warren Krech | 23 Seconds | +---------------------+------------+--------------------------------+-------------+
About half of those tests are fairly obscure local hosts. Local hosts rarely say their own name. Even if you “cheat a little” and look at the station web site and see if the name is still there, that takes minutes, not 20 seconds. My own rule of thumb is for a show like that, I wait about five minutes for the show to ID itself or at least someone on the show to say the host’s first name “Well, Bill, I was talking to the mayor…”….
A show like “Duke and the Doctor”, I would recognize in 20 seconds, but I know the voices of pretty much everyone in radio from doing this for 7 years.
One of the unproductive things I’ve now spent time doing is writing a routine for a situation like this one is to create a one-click link that reverse all 600 items tested and force a retest.
This came to my attention when I was spot checking a test and the just-tested test was done on a stream link that was obviously broken and could not possibly have been used for a test. When I wrote an email to inquire about that, the email bounced.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to help much with testing for the past month or two… been preparing for our first migration back to AZ for winter, so chaos rules. After we arrive and get things setup and are settled-in, I’ll start testing more.
The only time I could achieve the testing speed shown in the above log was during a syndicated show (Hendrie, Noory, et al) and/or when I knew the voices of the hosts.
Actually, I could even do a bit more using two computers, but only under ideal conditions (long show segments and streams without ‘pre-stream’ ads, etc).
A station’s program schedule page is often out-of-date and incorrect, so I’d never rely on it… besides, that’s one of the primary reasons we are testing a stream, isn’t it?
Can’t figure out why someone would do that, unless they wanted to sabotage SRG.
No, I have seen no real examples of intentional sabotage. Once in a while there is someone changing a show they don’t like to try to hide it, but those are not hard to spot. Until I trust a new tester, those changes are emailed to me in real time.
The baseball thing has me so frustrated I completely turned off the ability to change schedules. Unless you know which teams are in the playoffs and which game(s) are on at which times, it’s pretty impossible to realize that the reason you’re hearing a Clark Howard rerun is because of a baseball game.
What’s going on is people think the objective of having a “to do” list is to clear it as fast as possible. The “points” thing just adds to the motivation. The idea that I want people to be careful and slow is counterintuitive.
Since Foyle stopped testing (this is not a criticism), there are dozens of people now testing as things start to expire. They’re testing the shows they listen to – which is basically what I want. If an item gets 60 or 90 days old and nobody cares, I hit the “delete” button unless there is a compelling reason to keep it.
I’ve been mulling creating a limit per hour or per day to discourage people from testing schedules all day long. It might be adjustable based on how long and much people have tested. Being the “testing police” is not my idea of fun.
This is prolly not the ideal place to note this, but it’s remotely connected, I think. I’ve tried to test and to correct incorrect programming on a few stations (say, Rusty Humphries on when Mark Levin is scheduled on station WXYZ), but since that option is turned off for the terribly important world series, I can’t do a thing. Perhaps a Comments Box someplace could solve that and other “none-of-the-above” issues we bump into from time to time. Adieu!
How many volunteer testing points do you have so far?
Look for Hesperus.
So … that was a bad idea? Showed too much hutzpah? Really, I was only trying to help.
Derry Brownfield died in March. I marked the show as dead and added the explanation that the host had died.
I then mark every station that had been carrying the show so that I will revisit it eventually to find out what show replacement the station chose.
One tester in July and this tester in September confirmed that Derry Brownfield is still alive and doing a radio show.
Upon further review, the station has been off the air since August, the web site is gone and the stream returns an error
Common Sense Coalition is back, kind of. It’s now called CSC Radio and hosted by a woman with no last name. I suspect the “rights” to the name are tied up in probate which is the reason for the name change.
The list of affiliates is almost all tiny stations that don’t even have a web site, or if they do – they don’t stream. I don’t expect it to take away Glenn Becks’ audience, but at least it is in the database now.