2010 Streaming
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Expenses: $2,870.00

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February 21, 2010 More than once in the past couple weeks I've received emails from people regretting that they will no longer be able to listen to AM 1710 because either a boomarked address no longer works or because they can't play .pls files. In this regard, I have not changed anything on you! AM 1710 is an mp3 stream which is the most compatible streaming format on the face of the earth. It is supported by hundreds of software titles and devices. It was even begrudgingly supported by the makers of  competing formats such real player and windows media. Let me take the mystery out very quickly. A .pls file is used for web browsers in particular so that they can know that they don't have to interpret the mp3 stream which they are not designed to do. The .pls tells the web browser to hand it off to a supporting application. A .pls file is merely a little text file that contains the locations of streams or files. If that doesn't work for you, just use the URL without the .pls file. Enter one of the URLs below in your player or device and bookmark it or whatever it is you do to keep it: http://lin2.ash.fast-serv.com:9022 If you can't resolve the ip name it is http://209.9.238.5:9022 February 3, 2010 It was  a pretty big undertaking but I made AM 1710 keep playlists weekday independent. I also made it so it can schedule 2 days in advance whereas before it was only scheduling 20 minutes in advance. What you get for all of this is the ability to look back about 2 days and look forward at least one day for what will play. So if you heard something in the middle of the night and weren't about to get up to find out, you can now look it up the next day. I'm only doing this for the OTR shows so don't ask me about doing it for the music. It's all in the Recent & Upcoming episodes on the left menu. Also, a couple days ago I added the flash player (see the flash player button the left) so you can play AM 1710 right in your web browser here. January 25, 2010 fastserv.com has adjusted our streaming rates which will save $910 on streaming annually (from $3,780.00 to $2,870.00) while also increasing the maximum from 700 to 800 listeners. It's your choice. Vote with your money. Already a couple years ago I quickly replaced the power supply which died in the aging Mac G4. Fortunately I happened to keep the old power supply after Apple gave me a free replacement due to a noise problem. It's a bit more noisy again but it's holding okay. In an emergency I can replace this G4 with a mini I'm already using. But it would be good to properly replace the 2003 Mac G4 with a new Mac Mini with two large HDDs. That would be just about $1,000. Thereafter, in 2011 and beyond, things should cost less per listener. January 11, 2010 Nice little find... Radium now carries AM 1710. Radium is a small radio app that keeps its interface in your menubar on Mac 10.5 and up. January 4, 2010 I listened to a couple hours of AM 1710 myself while on the road last week. What amazed me was that I was able to listen right through the Allegheny Mountain Tunnel on Route 76 in Pennsylvania without interruption. Credit to Verizon for their mobile data services. I just added 53 new Agent K7 returns episodes. These are 15 minute episodes from 1938 which will air in the Spy Stories segment. October 6, 2009 The problem last week was the DSL and AT&T was actually very good. My first call I still had to go through the stupid questions but it was mostly friendly. My second call was directly to someone in St. Louis (they make a point to say that) and he saw the errors while we were on the phone. He had someone out here withing 3 hours. That person did some tests and gave me some ideas while determining the problem was probably inside the house. He still suggested he change a port in the CO which was supposed to happen within 3 days and in fact happened within 16 hours. But before that happened I figured it out by process of elimination. The AT&T guy who came out suggested my wiring in the house should be redone but I eventually figured out it was merely the cable between the jack and the modem. I was already on that track days before calling AT&T by elininating a hop through the UPS and assumed the cable of a higher thicker quality wouldn't be bad. With DSL solid again, I moved AM 1710's stream back to that line. I had some things to clean up form network issues such as intros and outros that were not properly replaced but now things should be all cleaned-up. September 30, 2009 Either the DSL or the router is causing a connection drop here every hour or two now. The problem started a couple days ago and has only gotten worse regardless of what I've already tried so I moved AM 1710's outbound to the other DSL line while I troubleshoot the original. We'll see how that goes. July 8, 2009 Just ending Chandu we now begin the enormously long (439 episodes) Jungle Jim. If all of them are good enough to play, this serial run will take us 10 months to get through. We're busy previewing it well ahead of the airing schedule. The Milwaukee Theater is presenting Say Goodnight Gracie September 26. If anyone's seen this, feel free to write me to let me know what you thought of it. June 20, 2009 The Behringer Ultra-Dyne 9024 went kaput a couple days ago so no more hardware processing. I happened to be exploring further processing the stream for a happy processing compromise for the stream and the terrestrial when a day later I discovered Nicecast would allow me to parallel process so I was able to create a fork in the audio chain and apply further software audio processing to a separate audio output on the Mac so the stream remains moderately processed and the AM is fairly aggressive. Not bad. If only I could find software that will do assymetric peak limiting. Nicecast is truly remarkable software. I also just learned that I can hot load and uload any plugins in Nicecast without quitting the program and restarting the stream. Yesterday we also replaced the router with a better one with traffic shaping and more. The old one, which I purchased in an emergency from Walmart, will be my backup as we enter lightning season. Saturday night into Sunday night our stream provider is doing some upgrading and moving of hardware using a service window of about 4 hours so if the stream is down during that time you know why. May 30, 2009 We had our wings clipped just a little this week. I had to remove a very small number of programs due to a copyright claim on particular restored programs. But in place of that material, particularly for the weekends in the serial slot, we are adding The Ghost Corps on Saturday and The Green Valley Line on Sunday. The former is sort of an underground agent network working in the mid-east and far east. The Green Valley line is a serial about a small train town at the turn of the 20th century. We also should get Jungle Jim as the serial successor to Chandu in a few weeks. My kids are reviewing it on their mp3 players now. Thanks Allen for the suggestions and help with the material. I get to work with Windows here and there, and when I do I'm just so envious the Mac doesn't also have tools to maliciously remove software. May 20, 2009 There are more show replacments (Lone Ranger) and wholy new shows (Yours Truly Johnny Dollar) in the pipeline coming this summer. The problems of iTunes crashing and related symptoms all seem to be solved. The last problem was with intros and outros for a few segments due to the trash not being able to be emptied one day and I forgot to clean up the accumulated problem intros and outros for Frontier Stories, Family Comedy and at least one other segement since late March but that should all now be fixed. Now we just wait for a hardware failure or another lightning strike. March 30, 2009 Here are a few things I've done in the past month or so... Added about 20 new Mystery House episodes, started the Chandu serial, and changed weekends to play music programs in place of the serials since most serials were traditionally Mon-Fri and musical remote programs were on the weekends. I've recently started tackling the growingly frequent problem of iTunes crashing when scheduling segments which would cause trouble for the segment playing and for the segment scheduled causing you to hear silence at times. I ran all system updates but that didn't fix it so I convinced myself that I might be causing the problem with my own programming and so I'm changing some of the ways scheduler works to attempt to work with iTunes in a more friendly manner that will not cause it to crash. If you hear silence for a segment or part of a segment over the next week, I probably know about it and I apologize. We'll get dependability back better than ever I think since all the other cogs in this machinery, particularly networking, have proven to be very solid for months straight now. January 24, 2009 Earlier this week I added 75 Phil Harris - Alice Faye to Family Comedy. December 2, 2008 There are a few inches of snow on the ground in Antioch. In a good snow season we have snow on the ground for most of the next 3 months but we usually have a couple full meltdowns during that time. The fill music switches to Christmas and seasonal music for the next month. Yes, we say 'Merry Christmas'. Again last Friday we had a 3 hour outage caused again by me finding the station running but Nicecast not broadcasting. So, I now have a cron job running an Applescript that checks the status of that every minute and repairs it if it is broken. This makes us even more resilient now I hope. For serials we will do Cinnamon Bear beginning on the 10th after we finish the Jerry at Fair Oaks series. After that I think we will do Speed Gibson which we haven't played in a couple years. We exceeded our financial needs for 2008 streaming costs and I'll be using that extra all for other AM 1710 needs. Thank you! I have a little something going back out later this month via postal mail to those who donated. Eventually we'll need to replace the vintage 2002 Mac and I have another Mac on standby that can replace it in case of a hardware failure. Also there are always new HQ shows to acquire. We are in really good shape and I thank all of you who have supported this. It is nice to have this escape from the everyday but I do encourage those particularly in the US to remain engaged in the current events and let those depression and WWII  era references in these historical programs lead us to be grateful for what we have today as well as put us on guard for our current challenges that are similar. October 29, 2008 AM 1710 was down from 5:30 AM to 9:50AM. I happened to catch Nicecast not running (on Standby) so I clicked "Start Broadcast" and it started again. I don't remember seeing that before. Internet was up the whole time, router is good, so it was either denied service at fast-serv or more likely something mysterious here. October 27, 2008 We begin a revised schedule today to rearrange the programs that play in the evening and early morning mostly so that those who have been listnening for years (and there are probably hundreds of you) can hear some different material at the times you can listen. I do this pretty rarely but it has been suggested by a few listeners and I concur since it has been a long time without any significant changes. I also removed Mystery/Thriller and replaced it with Matinee Theater for the 9AM slot since some people here in the U.S. don't find that Mystery/Thriller fits the morning mood well. The average listenership has remained about the same for the past couple years now. But there's an interesting trend of listenership increasing in the nighttime/overnight so that it nearly surpasses the daytime peak now with peaks in the mid 500s common at both times of day. The router problems of two weeks ago are apparently solved. I should also point out that the OTR audio is backed-up three times and one of those backups even accounts for natural disasters. I also have provisions to have a replacement AM 1710 computer on the air within a few hours of a hardware failure should one happen. We're in good shape here. October 14, 2008 Due to router problems over the past week or two I've given up troubleshooting and repairing the old one and this afternoon I replaced it. The new one has dropped the connection a couple times this evening and I'm hoping it smooths out here with some adjustment. I'm keeping a close ear on it so if you notice erratic service in the near term you at least know I'm aware of it and working on it. September 3, 2008 We'll get back to Superman later after I get more work done on it. We made it through the complete 325 episodes of the first series and a little beyond. In the meantime I've switched the serial segment over to Jerry of the Circus and Jerry at Fair Oaks. Dates for these episodes are somewhat theoretical and provided by friend of AM 1710, Allen Freitag. I also brought other similar shows together with the Shadow to make it Incognito Crime Fighters. You'll now also enjoy The Avenger, The Blue Beetle, The Green Hornet and soon also The Whisperer. August 5, 2008 Added 13 replacements and 5 new of Broadway Is My Beat. Added 12 replacements and 8 new of Fort Laramie which BTW stars Raymond Burr also known doing Perry Mason on TV. After not airing this show several years, I finally reacquired 81 Amos 'n' Andy shows from the sitcom years of 1943-1945. Amos 'n' Andy started as a dramatic serial before moving to comedy and the sitcom format. For more information, see the wikipedia article. Dan has added a new dial detail shot to the antique radio gallery for a 1935 Airline radio that I think is a must see. Want to see the callsigns across the country in 1935? You'll recognize quite a few. Some have moved and some are in their current dial position today. August 1, 2008 An unscheduled (as far as I know) DSL outage took down both of my DSL lines for 2 hours from 12 AM to 2 AM. This doesn't actually happen too often but since I tell you when I purposely take down the station for 30+ minutes, this is noteworthy. July 26, 2008 Doing some maintenance and basic software updates this evening between 7:30 PM and hopefully will have everything back up by 8 PM. 8:15 PM Update: Back on and all seems well. July 14, 2008 AM 1710 gets nearly nationwide coverage now with iPhone I have reports from two listeners that the software upgraded iPod Touch, iPhone 3G and software updated 1st generation edge iPhone can use the $4.99 Tuner and that it works very well even on the slower edge connections. Thanks Dave and Keith for the reports. July 10, 2008 Has AM 1710 (nearly) anywhere (nearly) arrived? Take a look at the iPhone/iPod Touch app Tuner selling for $4.99 and apparently able to tune into any mp3 station. I haven't tried it and I welcome any feedback on how well this works. July 5, 2008 AM 1710 is featured in two local papers yesterday: The Chicago Sun-Times and the Lake County News-Sun. I recently replaced all of the Jack Benny with the collection from OTRNow.com, now 680 shows.  I still have to do more reviewing and I may do some merging from another collection in the future but I trust this collection is much better than what I previously had and it was probably the one show for which I sometimes received a complaint about quality. Yes, I'm getting the wife and kids involved in the reviewing process more and more. April 13, 2008 Both a listener and my kids pointed out that we skipped some episodes in the Superman serial. I should have listened to my kids first on this one b/c the listener further pointed out that these episodes exist and with that incentive I was able to find them. So we are going back a bit to play these in order. We'll have a few repeats because of this but we will have gained about 20 episodes. March 11, 2008 As promised, the super-long super serial of the Adventures of Superman begins today at 3:00 PM and 8:30 PM. I bumped The Shadow to 3:30. I'm still reviewing and prepping this series of 1,000+ episodes months ahead of the play schedule. I suppose it should run close to a year and a half should all the episodes turn out to be airable quality. February 25, 2008 AM 1710 Anywhere. It's coming. Over the past few months I've received a few emails from people interested in whether or not I knew of a way to have AM 1710 stream over an iPhone or iPod Touch. The prospect would make an iPhone almost tempting enough for me to buy at that point. (I still wish tethering my laptop were allowed and then I'd be completely sold). I've seen another attempt at playing streaming stations on the iPhone but it was not complete enough to bother announcing here. The ability has been there with other mobile applications before, but the iPhone platform generates so much more interest by actual users, that radio over this platform will actually increase the number of listeners appreciably and maybe to the point where the satellite radio companies will start fighting it. The most recent is completely web-based and it is flytunes.fm. I recently received word about this service by an AM 1710 listener and that AM 1710 was added to it. For whatever reason it is generically named "Old Time Radio Shows" station in the Talk category. So far they don't charge but it appears they intend to. So far they don't run ads over audio or on the site but it appears they may want to by looking at their contact page. Also, from what I've observed, they add a delay of up to 9 more minutes. I already have a delay of 80 seconds and I've compensated for that by playing things 80 seconds earlier here in Antioch. All of these things are what may come with betas. Also I was only playing it in Safari on my destkop computer by switching my User Agent to Mobile Safari 1.0 so other oddities such as it stopping and graphically not showing it playing may be because I'm not using it as intended. This is a step in the right direction, but with the iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit) nearing release from Apple, I predict it will be possible to tune in streaming stations via an application built for the iPhone and iPod touch without having to use a website intermediary. It would even be possible for me to write such a thing but I predict I won't need to. I can only guess that AT&T might not like so much data use but eventually I think streaming stations to mobile will become commonplace. December 18, 2007 Merry Christmas! My longest period without an update. The collection really is pretty good now. Yes, I'll continue to improve it. But the urgency I felt to fix everything over the past 4 years is finally tempered by having so much in good shape. Superman is in the pipeline to be run as a very long serial probably by the end of winter. New on the left links is my nighttime list of AM stations heard in Antioch, IL. I compiled this list by listening on a Sangean DT-180 on my living room couch using its directional antenna to help verify station locations and to pull out stations I might otherwise have trouble hearing. June 1, 2007 Longtime listener Jacob Hall has just published a flattering article about AM 1710. I put up a new poll to run for the whole month of June which I think we'll all find interesting. Many who have written me make assumptions about what age demographic listens to old-time radio with the thought that they, in their age group, are unusual. They might be right. While by no means scientific, the age poll ought to satsify some of that curiosity and confirm or contest those assumptions. May 31, 2007: Now that I played The Planet Man about 3 times, and maybe once too many times, and the poll results are in on what should be the next serial, it's time to let you know my plan. I know serials aren't that popular but there is a core group that loves it and I don't know of any other broadcasters doing serials like this so we are going to keep doing it. I'm going to defy the results just a bit for a few reasons. We've never played Behind the Mike, it just doesn't fit well into any other genre, and it also came in second in the poll. It is a radio show that gives us a peek behind the scenes of pre-war radio (which means just before the U.S. involvement in WWII). It's available for free at archive.org here in case you want to explore it in your own time. After that we're going to do Magic Island. The Magic Island I have is my 3rd copy and it is from Jerry Haendiges. Although it is now better than Jerry's because I cleaned it and fixed it a bit which I can do well with Jerry's stuff because he provides very high bit-rate mp3s. It is certainly worthwhile to play here because the audio quality is uncommon as far as I know. And even though the dialog can get a bit cheesy, the science and the use of imagination in this fantasy is pretty amazing and very interesting considering it is from the mid 1930s. Also, for films about radio, explore the Prelinger Archive at archive.org. Here are some examples you might find interesting: Behind Your Radio Dial: The Story of NBC (1947) Back of the Mike (1938) Command Performance (How shellac records are made 1942) May 25, 2007: In the past couple weeks added 63 The Man Called X to Spy Stories, 31 The Haunting Hour, 19 Witchs' Tale to Mystery/Thriller, and 65 The Lewis and Martin Show to Comedy Shows. Added 19 more This Is Your FBI to Police Stories and did several more replacements, some removals and several dozen pitch adjustments and noise removal fixes to The Whistler episodes and several others. Added about 200 30's era mostly sweet orchestra songs. From reel added or replaced a few Lux Radio and Whistler episodes. Much more is in the pipleline but needs to be reviewed, adjusted, fixed, etc. May 15, 2007: You might have noticed a bit of downtime the past couple days. Here's what's been happening. Had to replace the router which was about 7 years old with a new one since the old one was disconnecting when performing certain actions. The new one gives me much better control and improved my up and down speed by about 33%. The power supply failed on the PowerMac G4 early this evening. Fortunately I participated in the Apple RMA power supply replacement progrm for noise issues so I still had the old noisy power supply which I installed early this evening. Thankfully the noisy Mac stays on the other side of the house so no one has to hear it much. During those couple hours I played some Behind the Mike episodes which I hope to add somewhere sometime. I've added more shows and should have many more added by the end of the week. I'll give a full report in the next update here. May 12, 2007: The first batch of reels are in and are now being digitized (See February 7 below). So far I've targeted getting more material for Spy Stories and Mystery/Thriller and I just can't resist yet another source for The Whistler. Could this be my 10th source now? I have a couple dozen to review and so far I've replaced 3. With any reel at 3 3/4 ips, it's common to find 12 1/2 hour shows on an 1800' reel. They are recorded separately to the left and right channels and both sides, with 3 shows to a side per channel. At the same speed I'll get 8 1/2 hour shows on a 1200' reel. So I'm also collecting other collateral that I didn't specifically look to get so we will get a variety. Now to see if I make this a major longterm project. April 18, 2007: AM 1710 listener Jeffrey Rennie let's me know today that he's released a handy little piece of software for Mac listeners of AM 1710. ZZ Timer will allow the bedtime listeners to rest in peace (without OTR dream suggestions) by fading and stopping iTunes at a given half-hour interval. So in case some of you don't want to be rudely awakened by the super-modulated whistle of The Whistler, you can set ZZ Timer to fade down iTunes and disconnect before the show comes on. Added 19 new This is Your FBI April 11, 2007: The UPSs are having a nice workout today. We've had several tiny power blips over the course of the morning and part of the afternoon today as Antioch gets a good amount of wet snow. Rather funny since people were cutting their grass just a couple weeks ago. But this is actually really typical here. Sometimes we even get snow in May. March 17, 2007: Lesson for today: Don't leave your radio computer keyboard plugged-in during cat witching hour. Thanks Skeeter for reporting the outage.  Older Entries