Blog | Shrey Puranik

While I was doing my usual trawl of radio related news, I came across this article on RadioToday.  During the recent weather, radio stations became more important as listeners hopefully realised that they could get so much local information (or try to) on the platform.   I’ll quote the section which stood out for me.

On the south coast (an area hit by the Heart re-brand in 2009), Managing Director of independent station Juice 107.2, Ryan Heal, saw a 400 percent rise in traffic and found the weather to be a huge opportunity to claim audience. He told RadioToday.co.uk that “all stations managed to cover things in breakfast – but once our competitors switched to networked programmes, we were the only commercial station able to cover the local effects of the weather all day. This was a real moral victory for the ILR’s over larger networks”.

Juice 107.2 is a station based in Brighton, and this is an example of how the recent Heart network creation has affected listeners. Heart now own 33 regional stations across the UK, after they rebranded the old One Network in 2009. The recession has clearly played a part in how they now operate because the following things are noticeable:

• All stations within the network have the same look and feel website.
• The breakfast show, afternoon show, and the drive time shows are produced and broadcast from the said region (i.e Whitstable in Kent for Heart Kent Breakfast), but the rest of the shows are broadcast from Leicester Square in London, which is also home to Capital Radio amongst others.
• My personal opinion is that the old One Network stations had a unique sense of localness, which made me a happy listener to Invicta FM.

So going back to the original point that the local independent station, Juice FM 107.2 , was able to provide more accurate information on a more regular basis, because they are truly in the heart of the community.  When the Heart local shows switched back to networked schedule, there is no “localness” about the venture and worryingly, it is something which is not going to stop because of the economic climate. ]

The UK might be going through a cold snap, but it’s summer in South Africa and the heat is on as  England attempt to defeat the Proteas in the final test match!

In less than 9 hours, England will begin Day One of the fourth and final test match against South Africa in Johannesburg. This test series has been gripping from the first test back in Centurion before Christmas, and last week  England managed to pull of yet another great escape to enter the final game,  safe in the knowledge that whatever may happen in the next 5 days, they cannot lose the series.

Whilst most of the UK was  covered in snow last Thursday, the Newlands Sahara Park in Cape Town was bathing in sunshine that witnessed Graham Onions face the last over of the test match defending the final wicket from Morne Morkel, who needed 1 wicket to level the series for the home side. Lucky for England, Onions, who faced a similar situation in the first test before the festive break, managed to hold his nerve and England lead the series 1-0 with one to play.

Having said that, that last day was not easy listening. The term “stressful” has been used to describe the task that England fans face when the team play cricket, but I think everyone will agree, that its games like these that remind us what a wonderful game Test Cricket is, and that even though Twenty 20 cricket offers money, it does not offer the thrill of a 5 day game that we’ve grown to love and adore.

One of the discussion points in this series has been the use of the Umpire Referral System. Essentially, both teams have 3 opportunities to question the umpires decision. If the decision is reversed, the team retains the right to question a decision, but if the decision stands, they lose one of those 3 chances. Is it the right way to go? It’s affected the spinners the most, but it’s still being tested, and you can’t judge technology like this on just one series.

Englands spinner/batsman Graeme Swann has also played a vital role in the teams success on this test tour. Vital wickets, and vital runs have meant that his contributions to the matches have been match winning and his comments on Twitter have left us in good hearted spirits

Last week,  we interviewed Neal Collins, of the London Evening Standard on the Rock Steady Eddy show on Pure FM, where we spoke about his latest book, entitled A Game Apart, and also discussed how much the country has grown in recent years.  It’s a huge year for the African Continent as a whole, as the FIFA World Cup 2010 arrives in South Africa this summer, and it’s looking to be a celebration of how far things have progressed.

The cricket team are still going through a developmental phase, but with Makhaya Ntini seemingly out of the test squad, the search is on for more young talent to be led into the first team. Freidel De Wet, the Durban fast bowler, made a fierce debut in the first test, and nearly won the game for South Africa, had it not been for some defiance at the crease from Greamme Onions, who has earnt himself the nickname “President” amongst others. The return of Dale Steyn to their attack in time for the Cape Town game had given South Africa renewed hope, but their reliance on Ntini up until the third match is to be questioned after a disappointing performance leading up to and after his milestone 100th test match!

The media coverage for this tour has been incredible. The BBC’s trusted Test Match Special coverage has been enhanced by the use of Twitter, on which Jonathan Agnew updates his followers on the happenings out in the commentary box.

It’s been snowing so I took some photos!

Check them out on the (http://www.flickr.com/photos/drumking88/sets/72157623040957425/)

I meant to write this update a few days ago, but got involved in some nasty Object Oriented PHP, but here it is..

The radio is a pretty cool device! No matter how you listen to your favourite show (on the FM, via your digital TV, or the internet), it’s amazing to have someone sitting in a studio and then talking to potentially millions of people!

The last of those 3 listening mediums has really taken off in a huge way! Back in the day (not my day, but you know what I mean), when people moved abroad, they would miss their favourite (local/national) radio shows as they couldnt pick up the frequency in their new location. Certainly a few years before Internet Streaming,  I used to miss listening to Invicta FM when we went on family holidays.

Now it’s a different story, what with online streaming, and because of the economical climate (that we find ourselves in), some stations are scrapping their “FM” license and broadcasting solely via the Internet.

Internet Radio’s are also pretty cool. They cost a bit more than your DAB, but it’s worth the payment. Provided you are connected to the internet, you can scroll through millions of stations from around the world and listen in real time! I found myself making a Chinese dinner the other night, whilst listening to an Australian comedy show, and thats a combination you won’t find on you local dial!

I even managed to catch Chris Bleach on Fused Again! on Pure FM thanks to this Internet Radio!

So the question here is:

Will stations now scrap their FM license and move completely to Internet broadcasting?

Surely they will lose a lot of listenership, certainly from the mobile listener who tunes into his/her favourite show when driving to/from work or on the train. Somehow I don’t see this happening, but its worth keeping an eye on this!

It snowed last night, and pretty heavy (by Medway standards). I woke up and took a picture!

There’s always something about the Christmas atmosphere. It’s always colder than other times of the year, and this year, its really got cold. We made a snowman earlier, and it’s still there!

England are back playing Test Cricket against South Africa. They’re trialing a new Umpire Referal System which is now in the spotlight after an incident in todays play. Stuart Broad was given not out, then the Proteas waited 35seconds before demanding a umpire decision review.

One person whom I will miss during the mornings is Sir Terry Wogan (Wake Up To Wogan) who did his last show on BBC Radio 2 today. I’m listening to the show on the iPlayer and as a fellow Twitter user said today “A real Tear Jerker”. One of the amazing things about radio is that the more you listen to a show, you end up developing a connection with the host/presenters of that particular show.

Thank You Sir Terry!

So I’m back home now for the Christmas holidays (in Kent), and have to admit that it’s nice to be away from everything, and just reflect, and get on with uni work. There’s a lot of work to be done over the next 3 weeks including essays, reports, and project development.

November was another busy month, and 3rd year is proving hard work. That said, I’m really enjoying the whole freedom with the dissertation project, and I’ve written a couple of functions which I think are pretty cool.

One of these functions is a Postcode converter, which takes the users input (Postcode), and then translates it into Longitude/Lattitude variables, which can then be used by Google Maps to produce a map based on the central point (Longitude/Lattitude).  Now, use this with other websites which churn out longitude/lattitude variables, like Twitter, and you have the ultimate stalking tool! I showed this to Dan Smyth (of Pugwash and Film & Photo fame) and he has told me he is not allowing his Twitter to Geo-tag!

Over the next few days, I’ll hopefully be able to build the rest of the CMS for the project, and launch the website.

Of course, I can’t not talk about Pure FM, and things are really looking good for the station. We’ve had a hectic 1st term under the new committee, but we’ve gone places. Broadcasting in new venues, doing more FM shows than ever before, and giving our DJ’s a platform on which to blog – I think its been a great term, and hopefully after the 3 weeks away from Portsmouth, it’ll be another great 2 months!

I walked into Pure FM today, and like most students, I wanted to check what was going on in the social world, so loaded up Facebook.

Only, due to me not paying attention to the keyboard, instead of www.facebook.com, I ended up going to http://vvvvvvfacebook.com/

Silly me!

Wow, it looks like Facebook, same colours as Facebook…and there’s a chance to win an iPhone! So I clicked on the link… and then got this page!

The catch being that its a subscription service, and at £4.50 a week too!

So, the moral of the story (excuse the cheese) is that you need to be careful when you go to these websites and make sure it’s the website you want to look at!

Term is finally underway and last week was incredibly busy! Freshers Fayre with Pure FM was an experience and the 21st Birthday night at Babylon was great fun!

I’m currently sat in one of the computer labs with Jiggens, and we have 24 minutes till our first tutorial on Wireless networks! My final year project idea has been approved and I have to meet my supervisor in the next couple of weeks. Really excited about finally getting to work on a project idea which I’m interested in!

I’ve been blogging over on the new Pure FM website! Check it out here!

Every Internet user has their own way of using the online medium for their purposes. But I’ve been fascinated by RSS and how it works. Wikipedia defines RSS as:

RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication” but sometimes “Rich Site Summary”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

As a regular user of Mozilla Firefox, I’ve long been used to my own personal set of bookmarks with links to my favourite blogs (cricket, music, radio related, computing) along the toolbar. So that means that everytime a blog or site is updated, I can view the latest update (provided I’ve subscribed to it).

This however has its positive points and in addition, the negative. The biggest problem with RSS is how you can take ‘em with you. On a recent trip to India, I actually felt a little lost when I had internet access as I couldn’t remember the website URL for specific blogs. I usually tend to also back up my bookmarks on my portable flashdrive, but on this occassion, I didnt take the flashdrive with me.

This is where Google Reader comes in! It is a web-based Feed reader, so you can access it from anywhere in the world (provided you have an internet connection). You can add all your favourite blogs to the subscription feed and it means that you don’t spend time searching for the blogs or websites.

With Freshers’ Week being 3 weeks away, I’ve spent a lot of time of late taking part in the redevelopment of the Pure FM Website.

Our new website is running via a very well supported Content Management System, and one of my tasks this past weekend has been to re-create a Music Requests System for the listeners of the station to use.

The current requests system was designed/developed by Holly and my job was to re-create this system but in a way that it could be intergrated within the Joomla! framework. If I’m honest, I was sitting by my desk on Friday night thinking how can I create something so powerful and important with my pretty limited knowledge of PHP and web development?

Around 12:09am (Saturday morning), it clicked!

The obvious way to do this, was using the powerful combination of PHP, MYSQL and some form of container for the information that was being queried. The container came in the form of a MYSQL table held in a database. I’m proud of how this system is currently looking, as its only been a few months since I’ve started programming regularly in PHP and to get this working is quite cool!

Once the initial testing was done, we moved the files from one server to another, and with some help from Fred, the system is now works, and there are a couple of small but annoying bugs which need to fixed, but overall, this is another step in the development of a radio stations website!

One of the most critical things in developing any application (as I found out in this case) is regular testing of the product. I was lucky that during the weekend, I had regular contacts online who could spare 20 seconds to search for a song, and request it, and the emails coming through with requests via the system were pleasing to see. But what was even more pleasing was to be able to receieve an email from a friend with information about a quick bug-fix, which when employed on the website, saw better feedback!

Special Thanks to Alex Harries for his advice on Imploding and Exploding in PHP!

Oh it’s so rock n roll!