Support AM 1710

2012 Operations
Donated: $555.00
Expenses: $2,928.00

2011 Operations
Donated: $3,020.00!
Expenses: $3,020.00

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August 24, 2011 The TuneIn people told me I shouldn't use titles if it isn't music. I disagree. But rather than pick a fight with them I've figured out that if I make the title preceding the dash something that consistently doesn't find art in a search at last.fm, I can have it display the AM 1710 logo all the time. So now all titles start with "ABN OTR -". The Green Hornet can now return without TuneIn listeners having to look at a naked lady carrying a chicken by the legs. August 23, 2011 Incorrect art on TuneIn app I've noticed the problem with very incorrect art that the TuneIn app for iOS has been trying to grab from Last.fm. But the art for The Green Hornet has crossed the line from incorrect art to plainly pornographic. I've contacted the maker of TuneIn but so far their emails have put the blame on my titling. So until we can come to a more amicable solution, I'm removing The Green Hornet from our playable library. Superman fixes Sorry for the Superman episodes that were not fully playing. I've previewed episodes far ahead of what is played and heard none of these problems. In fact they opened fine on other computers and devices. I tried OS updates and iTunes update over the weekend but the problem persisted. I replaced some episodes that were troublesome and that fixed it but the problem kept happening. The actual solution ended up being just removing the tracks from iTunes and just re-adding them. Flash Player and Lion The Flash Player on this site on the left is not working with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion in Safari but it does work with the latest Safari in Snow Leopard and also with Firefox in Lion. I reported this to Apple a month ago but it's not certain who needs to make the fix. I tend to think this is an Apple Lion issue with Safari since two different flash-based players work in Firefox but don't work in Safari. DSL issues resolved If you followed my tweets a couple weeks ago, you would have read about both my main and the backup DSL going out at the same time for different reasons. The main went out due to line trouble and the backup was working at that time but when I thought I'd do my own troubleshooting of the in-house wiring to be sure the problem was not in the house, when I tried to reconnect the backup DSL, it wouldn't authenticate. AT&T disconnected my service and couldn't tell me why. After 4 attempts to find out why over a couple days, I asked that all my service on that line be removed. All I could figure is that when I made the request to set me at the speed I ordered, instead of the arbtrary speed they set incorrectly a couple weeks before, they must have disabled authentication and cancelled service. Weirder yet is a couple days after disconnecting phone service and DSL on that line, an AT&T guy shows up to install new service. And he wasn't even installing the correct speed I originally asked for either but the incorect speed I never asked for. Of course I told him the basic story and he said he'd sort it all out. Verizon 3G turned out to be a terrific backup so I will no longer keep an extra DSL line here. July 23, 2011 I just fixed the Widget so it works again (version 1.0.2). I'm still disappointed that Quicktime gets tripped-up apparently by the streaming metadata so you'll hear skipping every couple minutes. So for the best experience, I don't recommend it. If anyone is not hearing these skips, I'd like to know. I just fixed the encodings for the playlists so accent characters show properly. December 8, 2010 I've received a fair number of complains about the music. The reason we play classical and piano music is to avoid $2,000.00/yr in royalties that would be due to Sound Exchange for our mere 30-45 mins of incidental music if we choose to play music of the period. I need filler for the way this station runs its schedule and this is the best I can do right now. We received considerably more than our financial needs this year even with the challenges of legal fees and purchasing a whole new computer. I've used the extra to help upgrade my audio restoration software and have already worked on hundreds of episodes in the comedy sections this month. Starting today, I'll start receiving for 2011. The amount needed will start out less at $3,000.00 for the year to pay for the streaming server and a dedicated internet connection here. If we are far ahead of schedule for donations in 2011 I may elect to use the extra to get legal help to possibly allow us to play period music again without having to pay unreasonable royalties. If you can advise on a good Android app to play AM 1710, I'd be happy to present that info here. Just write me using my email address at the top of the home page. November 13, 2010 A listener pointed me to another iPod Touch/iPhone app that I now think is the best. TuneIn Radio is $1.99 and features background play, sleep timer, record, pause and resume or replay, and it offers a nice radio directory, link to our website, and the basic weekday schedule is there as well, although I'm in the process of getting radiotime.com to correct the info for the weekends and serials. It's also perfect for responsive and smooth operation. November 4, 2010 I finally got myself an iOS device--an iPod Touch 4G. And now I finally got to see what it's like for many of you who have listened on this device. It gave me a chance to try different streaming apps out and I've determined that Tunemark Radio (99¢) is the best. It has a sleep timer (which many of you use AM 1710 for as do I), it has a link to the home page on this site, it streams in the background and even pauses and keeps a running buffer. You can go back a few seconds or minutes and relisten to a portion if you need to. It allows you to set your own background I choose to use a very nice warm shot of one of my antique radios. October 12, 2010 I've expanded the Superman from 325 episodes to 983 episodes. The new episodes will span September 1945 through September 1948 and we get to hear Batman and Robin acting in the plots starting in 1945 too. I and my three kids are running through these episodes ahead of the station schedule for a quality check before airing. The run of Superman should go probably to the end of 2011. The Superman that played today and yesterday were not originally meant to play on AM 1710 and we will return to the serial starting with episode 205 in the middle of the Dr. Deutsch and the Radium Mine story starting tomorrow. September 22, 2010 The new Mac Mini with external HD is here and currently running AM 1710 after I decided late last week to go ahead based on donations so far and cash onhand. Over the course of the day yesterday, I cloned the whole setup. I put the new box on the air late last night after I observed the two boxes running in perfect parity for a couple hours. Total downtime was maybe 5 seconds. The new Mac uses about 1/10 the power as the 2002 G4. This is little enough power that I expect it should easily survive power outages over an hour or more and shut down nicely if the outage is too long. Even with the portable external HDD, it is nearly silent. The only other time this room has sounded this quiet was during a power outage so it's still a bit disconcerting. This is the first time I've used a brand new Mac for AM 1710 and it was purchased by your donations. Thank you. August 14, 2010 Our lawyers have determined that we do not owe royalties to Sound Exchange for our playing of old-time radio shows unless Sound Exchange can prove otherwise and now we have answered Sound Exchange's lawyer. There are a few other issues about our content I need to clear up with our side but this challenge did add $1,000.00 to our expenses. Certainly worth it to do the right thing. Had we just paid the default to Sound Exchange, no one at Sound Exchange was able to tell me of any owners who would have been properly paid. This is a battle we are fighting ourselves ultimately on behalf of all old-time radio streaming stations since we are the only ones we know who have been challenged. And this is one of the first good bits of news. August 2, 2010 I have a lawyer that's agreed to look into the Sound Exchange situation and give us some clarity. July 26, 2010 Our expenses may be higher that expected due to a requirement to pay royalties to SoundExchange and register with the Copyright Royalty Board of the United States Copyright Office. Should we increase our monetary need, based on the donations so far this year I've decided it's very likely listeners will step up to the challenge and we'll continue on. I've operated with the assumption that all material presented on this station, in particular the old-time radio shows, were not or are no longer under copyright based on the laws covering material between 1923 and 1963 so long as those copyrights were not renewed. I believe it is possible that this may exempt us from SoundExchange royalties.