Tag: radio

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Making a Radio Documentary – Honorary Doctorates

For my final year project at Staffordshire University, I’m making a radio documentary on honorary doctorates.

During the 2012 broadcast of Cre8 Radio, we got a list of the latest honorary doctorates that Staffordshire University were bestowing. I tried to get some of the honoraries on the station and had limited success.

When we were asked to come up with an idea for our radio feature, I thought ‘what difference do these honorary doctorates actually make to the university?’. Thus, my radio documentary was born!

To help solidify our ideas, we had to draw together a presentation to present to our lecturers and then put together some research to ensure that we will actually have content for our feature. This also helped us ensure that we have a clear direction for it.

So how will I fill this feature. It will have three main components:

  • A history of honorary doctorates; why do universities do them?
  • Interviews with honorary doctors; why did they get them and do they benefit from the awards?
  • Vox pops with students; did they help shape the choice of which university they went to?

To start the whole process off, I posted a survey online which asked students (current and graduates) to tell me what they think of honorary doctorates. The survey is still open, so please feel free to fill it in!

So far I have conducted an interview with the Academic Registrar and Director of the Student Experience at Staffordshire University, Noel Morrison. He gave me his views on why the university gives away honorary doctorates and if these doctorates influence the choices of students when picking universities.

I also have secured interviews with Esther Rantzen and Peter Coates! Esther is well known as a broadcaster, but she also founded Childline. And Peter Coates is the owner of Stoke City Football Club and founder of Bet365 and Signal Radio.

I am very happy to have secured interview with these two distinguished figures, and they will help show the way in which universities choose their honorary degrees; one is a well known national figure, and the other more local.

Those two interviews will take place over the next month and hopefully come mid-March I will have nearly everything recorded (apart from my own narration).

I’ve also got some audio of the actual Staffordshire University graduation ceremonies from Humanoid Productions and Reels In Motion. And the University have very kindly granted me permission to use the audio in my production.

It’s all slowly coming together and there are still the possibilities of getting another interview for the documentary!

Once it is completed I hope to post it online and no doubt I will blog about it again.

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Using WordPress to build a Radio Station Website

Recently several associates in the community radio industry have asked me for tips and useful plugins that I have used on site like One Media Group and Cre8 Radio. So I’ve pooled together some great tools that can help make a WordPress system work for a radio station; useful if you’re on a budget!

Contents:

Hosting

I won’t tell you where to go, but firstly you need to buy hosting and install WordPress on it if you want to have great flexibility. The sites on WordPress.com are only good for personal blogs and don’t have the functions required to use many of the tools below. You can find suggested hosts on the WordPress.org website at www.wordpress.org/hosting, but do look around elsewhere.

Personally, I use Tsohost. They are a great UK based company that provides 24/7 support (genuinely, I asked a question at 11:30pm and they replied in 20 minutes!) and even offers free whole website migration with some hosting packages. And with the coupon code “WordPress Rocks!” you can get 10% off any hosting package! Just enter it when placing your order.

Themes

Choosing your theme is essential, but don’t just look at the theme and take it as it is. Many sites take a template and then modify it to suit them. Whether that be a colour change or simply moving things about, beyond the widget function. If you have HTML, PHP & CSS knowledge then it will be very beneficial! If you can, stretch to a budget. Most good themes do cost a bit of money, usually between £20-£40, including exchange rates from American websites. Sites I would suggest for premium themes are WooThemes and ThemeForest. I don’t find the WordPress.org Free Theme Directory too useful, however the WP Theme category on Smashing Magazineis full of gems. Or you could always spin off your own WordPress theme which would give you exactly what you want, but may take a bit longer.

If you purchase a theme and it doesn’t support smart phones, why not try the plugin WPtouch. It is basically a theme which is only activated when users visit on a smart phone. There are lots of choices within the free version, however the paid version ($49/£31) does give you a lot more features like using custom menus and inline replies.

Bundles

There are two very useful bundles available for free, which contain some amazing features.

Jetpack for WordPress – jetpack.me

This bundle comes with WordPress and to activate it you must link it to a WordPress.com account. That account is free, easy to do and complete with a how to within the bundle. Notable features include WordPress.com Stats, Jetpack Comments, Sharing, Contact Form and Shortcode Embeds. All of which you should activate and configure upon installing Jetpack. I’ll talk about some of these later on.

WooDojo from WooThemes – woothemes.com/woodojo

This is already the second time I’ve mentioned WooThemes! Their WooDojo bundle brings features like Branded Login, Maintenance mode and Widget Previewing. Features here are ones where you’d usually have to install a separate plugin for each one, however they are bundled together nicely here along with simple settings. Definitely several here I use all the time!

Plugins

Here are some of the plugins I use to enhance the radio stations that I have on WordPress. I will refer to some of the features within Jetpack and WooDojo, but alongside others I’ll include links to their WordPress plugin pages.

URL Shorteners

WP.me Shortlinks – part of Jetpack

If you really want WP.me short URLs then you can use this as part of Jetpack. You can’t choose any other short domain or services and it doesn’t post automatically to Twitter.

WooDojo ShortLinks – part of WooDojo

Just like WP.me this will automatically generate your short URL, but you have the choice of TinyURL or bitly. If you hook in your Bitly username and API key you can use the bitly services and even your own short URL!

YOURLS – WordPress.org/extend

Having installed my own version of YOURLS I gave their WordPress plugin a go. I find this much easier to use then some of the others. It automatically posts to Twitter and can use a variety of short URL services, including the bitly custom domain setting.

Comment Systems

Facebook Comments

On the One Media Group website, I decided that as our audience were students, Facebook would be an ideal platform to use for our comments. I gave our management team moderator rights to the Facebook platform and then used the Facebook Comments for WordPressplugin to replace the standard comments system provided by WordPress. There are ways to implement it yourself, however using a plugin means that any API changes that Facebook makes, the maker of the plugin should keep them up to date for you. However do keep an eye plugins when using third-party services like Twitter & Facebook as they may break if the social networks change something very quickly.

Jetpack Comments – part of Jetpack – Jetpack.me/support

This recent addition to Jetpack seems to take care of wanting to allow users to login using Facebook or Twitter accounts when commenting. It builds right into the main commenting system of WordPress so uses all the regular settings you make in the Discussion panel.

Disqus – disqus.com

I’ve used this plugin before as I didn’t know about other alternatives. This requires you to make a Disqus account and moderate via their platform. I would now opt for other ways of sorting out comments however it might have something you want that others don’t.

Schedules

I always get asked how to do schedules in WordPress for a radio station.

I’ve worked with my good friend Christopher Smith to pull together a system that uses a text file and a series of PHP files to extract information. These files also are configured to generate an on air now, and on air next display. However this isn’t a fail safe system and it does require a lot of setup.

What other options are there?

How to Make a Radio Station Schedule Using WordPress – Wptuts+ tutorial

This tutorial shows how you can use custom post types to generate your own schedule. For my liking it is rather messy as you have to create lots of different posts with the information. However you can add descriptions easily, plus if you want to change it slightly you can as you go along.

Weekly Schedule – WordPress.org/extend

Whilst this plugin is primarily for TV schedules, it does double up nicely as a radio weekly schedule. You can have multiple schedules and display the show description either in the table itself or in a popup window. It also has categories so you can distinguish your speech-based content versus your daytime or specialist shows.

Google Calendar – Google.com/calendar

Using a Google Calendar is also a practical way to display your schedule, even if it does require putting in every single show manually. You could also share your calendar with other managers at the station so that it can be changed by others. It is possible then to embed the calendar in an iframe upon a normal WordPress page.

Timetable for WordPress (Paid – $20/~£12) – Codecanyon.net

This plugin was suggested by reader Satnam Rattu.

If you’re looking for something with a bit more flexibility, without the coding work, then this plugin could work for you. It boasts a selection of pre-defined skin colours and a neat side-scrolling feature.

Content Enhancements

WordPress Audio Player – wpaudioplayer.com

You’ve probably seen this player if you’ve been looking at websites with audio on. It is easy to install and comes with lots of customisation options, including a nice colour picker for the player. There’s also a button in the Media window when you add audio to a post, which makes embedding audio very easy.

However, if you are expecting a large amount of iOS or Android users to visit your site, it might be best to avoid this as it is purely Flash based.

WP-Polls – WordPress.org/extend

You can run polls for your users and also editors/admins using this plugin. Controlling the polls are relatively easy with expiry dates and multiple choice results.

Admin Tools

Advanced Access Manager – WordPress.org/extend

If you’re planning to have lots of users who will be logging in to provide content for your site, then you may want to watch what permissions they have more closely. Whilst the Editor/Author/Contributor model is okay, with Advanced Access Manager plugin you can create your own model for user access. You can create a new user type based on the original ones and then customise it as you wish.

WordPress Database Backup – WordPress.org/extend

A nice plugin that will help you keep a backup of your precious database. Either download, email or simply save the core database to your server. There’s even the option to add additional information from other plugins. You can schedule a backup as well, however I’ve found this not to be very useful with large databases.

Front End Upload – WordPress.org/extend

I’ve used this plugin to enable external show providers to send in their WAV/MP3 files. It’s faster than using WeTransfer and also it keeps all the data on your hosting. However, as the plugin page says, “Uploading files should be considered risky.” I would almost certainly always put this plugin on a private page or add a password to this plugin, which comes built in. It works in all browsers and is a nice tool to transfer content from different providers.

Ad-minister – WordPress.org/extend

This is useful if you want to have external advertisers, maybe your on air advertisers as well, or even ‘in house’ promotions on your site. It has a nice system for handling expiry dates and ad-rotations with weights. Plus you can see how many times an advert has been seen, along with it’s conversion rate.

Statistics

Every website owner likes to know who’s visiting what and when. If not, you should care! If you don’t then your boss and advertisers certainly should.

I usually run these two tools side by side as they differ in results and each have their own merits.

Google Analytics – google.com/analytics

There are an abundance of plugins that allow you to put your Google Analytics code in WordPress, but the easier (and arguably most effective) way is to simply post your code in your theme’s footer.php file, just before the </body> tag.

Google Analytics’ dashboard is nice and you can see a lot more details in here compared to the next tool.

Jetpack Site Stats – part of Jetpack – Jetpack.me/support

Another great part of Jetpack is the Stats component. It gives you all the important information like visits per day, top posts & pages and search engine keywords used today. It is great for Editors or Admins that want to quickly see what has been popular today or yesterday. I tend to use this more than Google Analytics.

Conclusion

Hopefully all of these plugins or tools will be useful to your radio station WordPress website, one way or another.

If you have any suggestions of plugins that have worked for your station, then please do leave a comment below or email me at oliver@oliverneedham.co.uk.

Notes

28/04/13 – I’m now looking to write a follow up to this post, especially as it was picked up by the CMA. If you have any more suggestions of plugins/resources or have specific questions, please drop a comment below and I’ll try and cover it in the next related post.

This article contains affiliate links. While I only ever write about products I think deserve recognition, I may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question.

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My Thoughts on Radioplayer ‘Online-first’ Slots

Update: Radioplayer has withdrew the slots. Read the update after the main post.

I’ve worked on Radioplayer whilst at Cross Rhythms and even got recognised by the RP team for designing a player which is “a great example of what a small community radio station can do using very little resource“.

However I’m not too sure about the way that Radioplayer is ‘opening up’ their platform to non-Ofcom Licence holding radio stations.

Having met and spoken with Mike Hill, who is the Managing Director of Radioplayer in the UK, several times, I have voiced my opinion on letting Student Radio Association stations on to RP.

Understandably, RP only wants to have stations that have good quality broadcasts and also abide good journalism practices. That is why they initially said only Ofcom licence holders can stream on the platform.

I believe that if a student radio station is part of the SRA then they should have these qualities already. For example, at One Media Radio at Staffordshire University, many of the shows are part of students’ courses so they must be clean and suitable for that, so when they go to air on One Media Radio they are already a reasonable quality.

I suggested to Mike that he speaks to the SRA and sees if there is some arrangement they can come to to get student stations on at a reasonable price. (I’m ignoring all the student radio stations that already hold AM or Community licences for the purpose of this discussion.)

Now RP wants to offer 30 slots on their platform for ‘online-first’ stations.

Looking at this as the Technical Manager of One Media Group (at Staffordshire University), my main concern isn’t the quality of our broadcasting on One Media Radio, but the cost and what appears to be a ‘bidding’ process.

Looking at the guidelines for stations wishing to apply (which can be found here), the following stood out to me:

Lot A – Non-profit community, student and internet radio stations
In addition to the above, your application should cover:

  • How you currently resource (or intend to resource) your station in terms of funding, streaming, and technology provision.
  • Whether you have had any previous broadcast experience eg. run an RSL (restricted service licence). This will help reinforce your case for Ofcom-level compliance.
  • Your proposed annual fee – Radioplayer is not a free product unfortunately, due to the extensive  investment which the BBC and others have put into the service. As a not-for-profit, all fees go straight  back into the product. The minimum guide bid for this category is £200 a year.

As a student radio station, which relies upon the good nature of the Students’ Union which funds us, we watch what we spend our money on very carefully. By putting a bid in at £200 that may hinder our chances as other non-profit, student and internet stations might be able to put more money into the project.

I am not for one moment saying that Radioplayer will just go with those with the most money, as they may not be able to say they’ve been part of an RSL or have a good history of online broadcasting. However it may be the deciding factor if two applicants are very close and one has a higher bid.

As I say, these are just concerns and it’d be good to know what others think of my points above.

By the way, I will be pushing for One Media Radio to apply for one of these slots!

The Radioplayer License Fees in Jan 2011

UPDATE:

A contact at a student station currently on Radioplayer has told me they paid £90 (plus VAT) to join the platform. They went on to say ” if it was double that we’d have to think twice.”

In the Radioplayer Ratecard, which is sent to stations applying, it says:

Year 1 license fees include a setup charge, to take into account the upfront costs of establishing stations on Radioplayer and setting up the central systems.

My contact also commented that they would expect the fees to go down for the next contract, however they have been told to expect it to go up.

Update – 21st November:

Earlier today, RadioToday.co.uk announced that Radioplayer has now had to ‘cancel’ the Online-first slots.

 The not-for-profit organisation initially offered 30 slots in June and invited any radio station which doesn’t meet the usual application criteria to submit their stream.

A spokesperson told RadioToday.co.uk: “Radioplayer is a small, not-for-profit organisation and unfortunately, whilst there were some submissions of high quality, overall, we received neither the scale nor innovation of entries to merit the additional management resources needed to support the project.”

Source: Radioplayer cancels non-Ofcom offerings

I predict that the costs were way too much for online first radio stations. And I’m not exactly sure what they were expecting in the way of applications.

Either way, this means that Radioplayer is very much for those that have an Ofcom licence and the money to put towards such an endeavour as RP.