101.5 FM Programming
At first, it was everything I could do just to keep my transmitter running stable for an evening of pleasant listening, so my programming options were limited. Playing CDs from one player, plugged directly into the transmitter with only a minimal amount of audio processing in between, it became a rather high-maintenance task as well. Eventually, I created a programming system that allowed me to enjoy maximum music with minimum fuss. The equalized mixer was a first step toward better sound. A six-disk Pioneer CD changer was the big leap to making an entire evening's repertoire come down to little more than pushing one button. When I decided I was technically ready for 24/7 operation, again my options became limited. Answer: rebroadcast anything the public couldn't get normally, even reports from a weather radio for hours on end. Late in 2000, I bought a satellite dish and finally went all music all the time, thanks to the wide variety of commercial-free music channels available (though the recent jump to XM was a big step backward). Here is what 101.5 FM's programming day now sounds like:

Weekdays

  • Start the day with Smooth Jazz from 4 a.m. to 9 a.m.
  • Get more upbeat with eclectic Adult Alternative from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
  • Rock it home with Classic Rock from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Then, when I can get around to it, I load the CD players up for a relaxing evening of contemplative sounds. The flow reverses direction like the tide going back out to sea...classic rock to adult alternative to smooth jazz and finally, to lull me off to dreamland, some new age. At the point the last CD ends, the satellite receiver is timed to kick back on with all night New Age under the stars.

Weekends

Weekends get a little more variety.

  • For Friday evening's return home, it's Solid Rock from 5 to 8. Then, after winding down through the same sequence as other weeknights, albeit with somewhat more eclectic jazz fusion and new age selections, it's time to drop something wild in everyone's bonnet.
  • That's right folks, don't touch that dial. It's Frank Friday, at least a double shot of Frank Zappa CDs, often lasting past midnight. Listening to Frank is my reward for making it through the week. It does more for my peace of mind than any amount of Prozac (not that I've ever taken the stuff). I also do special broadcasts on Mother's Day, and in December to commemorate both Frank's birthday and passing.
  • On Saturday nights, I break from the routine and indulge my collection of country rock, eclectic southern rock and folk. I call it Desert Rock. My last job in radio was working Saturday evenings at a country station, so you could assume I'm nostalgic for the last of my glory days, though I'm not. It's just hard trying to segue from some of the country flavored stuff into jazz, so I've concentrated it all to this one segment.
  • On Sunday mornings it's just like being in church. Traditional and mainstream jazz. I'm not so hot on the vocals, but the improvisational stuff can be breathtaking, and a nice change from some of the more vapid smooth jazz.
  • Once a month, as close to the full moon as possible, I play a comedy record on Saturday night after the country/folk stuff. Monty Python, George Carlin, Firesign Theater, Bob & Doug, Cheech & Chong, you name it. I call this feature Saturday Night Laugh.
  • In the tradition of the long album feature of freeform days, I play a double album to end the weekend on Your Double Sunday.

The technical stuff

Back to home

My CD collection

If you're a fellow audiophile, why not compare your record collection to mine? This text file can be inserted into any spreadsheet program and viewed alphabetically by artist. It's big, so set it up for 650 rows of cells to see it all.

Station ID Tags

Stations identify themselves for legal purposes by their assigned call letters (e.g. K-R-U-D, W-A-N-K). I've never given my signal a lettered call sign. The FCC controls that sort of thing, and the less I have to do with them the better. I use what the industry calls positioners, catchy slogans that create a unique identity for the station based largely on its format. Since I deal daily with a half dozen formats, I play instead on my complete devotion to uninterrupted music. You've already seen one of them on the “bumper sticker” on the home page (...because commercials suck!) Others among the three dozen or so I currently run include:

  • Radio made by hand
  • Low power, high quality
  • In stereo, but no double talk
  • A multivitamin for your ears
  • Where FM stands for Fine Music, not Funny Mensch
  • and my personal favorite: Because talk radio is for people who can't listen!
Because I am shy about revealing my identity (can you tell?), I used the speaking function on my Mac to record the positioners. Recently I've learned programming with AppleScript, and when it came time to record new positioners when I changed frequencies, I set up a high-tech way of doing them. First, type out everything you can think of to say about your station in TextEdit, breaking each one into a new paragraph. Then download a shareware program called WireTap, which records everything passing through your sound card. Since both TextEdit and WireTap are scriptable, the script you see below will record each paragraph into a separate sound file. Afterward you can import them into iTunes, convert them to AACs and burn them to CD or load them on your iPod. I connect the iPod dock to my mixer using its Line Out jack.
tell application "TextEdit"
 activate
 set this_text to the text of the front document
 set myCount to count every paragraph of this_text
 repeat with i from 1 to myCount
  tell application "WireTap"
   start recording
  end tell
  set myVoicer to paragraph i of the text of the front document
  set myVoicer to myVoicer as string
  say myVoicer
  tell application "WireTap"
   stop recording
  end tell
 end repeat
end tell
set frontmost to true
display dialog "All voicers have been recorded" & return & "into the desktop Voicers Folder." buttons {"•"} default button 1 giving up after 3 with icon note

In November '07 my iPod's hard drive took leave of this world, so I moved up to an iPod Touch. A remarkable instrument, but some drawbacks, the most noteworthy is that the alarm clock won't trigger a playlist. Since I had been using this feature to play music on my station for some time, I was taken aback. Well, all my music is also on my laptop, so I simply have it wake up at an appointed time, then run this script from the crontab one minute later:

tell application "iTunes"
 launch
 delay 20
 set frontmost to true
 tell source "Library"
  set myList to "Adult Alternative"
  tell playlist myList
   set shuffle to true
   set mytrack to some track
   play mytrack
  end tell
 end tell
end tell

Just copy and paste these into a new script window, compile them, and you're off and running. In the second script, simply substitute the text Adult Alternative for the name of the playlist of your choice.

What's that you say? How can I do this in Windows? Sorry, can't help you there. Shoulda bought a Mac, but you didn't need me to tell you that!
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