A good friend of mine made a comment that has stuck with me over the past few days “The Internet moves at the speed of Imagination!”
That statement remained with me over the past 3 days as we designed, built, and tested (I use those words VERY loosely) a complete broadcast studio in our office.
How it all began
There is a local radio station that featured a conservative radio talk show, Talk of the Town. The show was a live call in show broadcast M-F 11am – 1pm. As with a lot of media, there is a move towards consolidation and ownership changes. Last Friday, the ownership of the station changed, and as with any new owners, their vision for the station differed from hosting a local, call in talk show. On Friday, the station changed its format to High Energy Dance music bringing a little Jersey Shore to our local town.
At the same time, our single local paper announced they were putting up a digital pay-wall for their news content. Again, their right to do so.
Immediately upon hearing of the cancellation of the talk show, Ozean approached the show hosts with an idea:
In this media chaos, there is an opportunity. We can create a digital station that will focus on hyper-local coverage and build an online community around it. And yes, we can have you back on the air by Monday.
The scramble begins
A secret? As with many things on the Internet, we had no budget and no specific idea how to actually do this. We knew it could be done, but the how….
We just remained focused on producing the Minimum Viable Product – we wanted a live broadcast with live call ins with the ability for people to listen in a web portal or mobile app. Piece of cake, right?
Here is a rough timeline with the snags we worked through (some of the details may be fuzzy due to sleep deprivation….)
FRIDAY
Step 1) Find a third party partner who could accept our live stream and push it to pre-made mobile apps. This is the critical piece.
SNAG: The provider is located in California with one sales person who was telling me that they couldn’t have me on by Monday (it was too technically challenging and we would most likely crash and burn.) I politely insisted he take my credit card and take my money. The sales man finally relented, and I stopped at a Starbucks and executed the contract online. In a triage situation, this was the airway.
Step 2) Build out a quick website. Cobbled a quick website together using WordPress. It is not the prettiest site nor is it totally built out, but not bad for 5 hours and 2am in the morning. Alachuatalks.com
Step 3) Cobble together software to broadcast and test connection. Tested multiple software packages and vendors.
SNAG: Our chosen provider’s software works only works on a PC. DARN IT everything is set up to go through a Mac. Spending about 3 hours on forums and google searches, we find an alternative piece of software, download trial and configure.
SNAG: For the life of me, could not get a connection made. I suspected that I was not opening a firewall port correctly. Called in reinforcements. A network expert, Stafford Jones, and he remotely dialed into our computer and diagnosed issue and fixed it. We were now connected to a test server.
Step 4) Build out additional web pages and functions. Install analytics at 9 pm. Post a couple social media posts about the show pointing to the new site. I am embarrassed of the sites appearance. Real time results show there is interest in the new website. Encouraging. Pass out.
Step 5) Wake up an hour later – forgot to place a place to capture email addresses on the site. Set up Mailchimp list, build widget, insert crudely into the website making it even more ugly. Sleep again.
SATURDAY
Step 6) New equipment. We needed new mics, a mixer, a way to digitize, connectors to get it all into a computer and broadcast.
SNAG: Of course we could find all the equipment we needed online, but we needed it Saturday, not in 2 -days shipping time. Asked a friend if he had a spare mixer laying around? He did! Then looked in a spare closet for old equipment we already owned that may work. Found a piece that MAY WORK! Drove to a local music store (Lipham Music) and told them what I was attempting to do. They shared their expertise and we cobbled a system together. True, it is not optimal, but it MAY work.
Step 7) Opening, plugging in and testing. Started cobbling together all this different equipment from different eras, praying it all somehow worked.
SNAG: My daughter has a dance recital on Sunday, and because I am going for the dad of the year award, we had Daddy Daughter dance rehearsal on Saturday 9am.
Step 8) Returned from dance recital practice and test cobbled together mics and returns.
SNAG: Mics are working, Returns are not working. Set this aside until later and make note to call my friend who owns the mixer so that he can help me. (He later looks at a photo of the mixer online and tells me what knobs to turn. BOOM! Working!)
Step 9) Ability to take call ins.
SNAG: We have a VOIP system in our office and I didn’t want to use my regular business phone for a call in number. When attempting to purchase a new number and configure our Asterisk server to route the number to a phone, I suddenly remembered that we have a phone number with our internet provider that we never use. We don’t even have a phone line attached to it.
SNAG: Because, we only have VOIP phones, I don’t know if that phone line works. We need a cheap $9 phone and an old analog phone cord.
SNAG: We need a specialized piece of equipment that can splice in phone calls and allow the hosts to interact with the caller. Called my network friend, Satfford, again. We agree to work on it on Sunday.
SUNDAY
Cobbled together studio
Step 10) Major Issue: Solve the call-in problem.
SNAG: Daughter’s dance recital is today – this means Dress rehearsal at 1:55pm and recital at 6pm. Put call-in issue off for now.
Step 11) Test mobile connection. Call one of the hosts, walk him through install of mobile app and test broadcast on his I-phone. BOOM! He downloaded mobile app and could hear me broadcasting. Partial success. (didn’t mention the call in issue)
Step 12) Dress rehearsal. Pick up daughter, head to Performing Arts Center for a 15 minutes rehearsal. Take her home head back to office.
Step 13) Meet gracious friend, Stafford Jones, at the office. Plug in cheap phone. DIAL TONE. Now, how do we get this to work with the other stuff? Our first set up got the audio from the phone to the broadcast, but the callers wouldn’t hear the hosts. We started cutting wires splicing it together, destroying some headsets and phones along the way. Tired. Went home Sunday night not knowing how we were going to get this critical part to work, but had an idea of what may work.
Step 14) Dance recital. 6pm.
Step 15) Panic. How am I going to get the call ins to work?
Step 16) Exhausted and worried that we are heading for a disaster remember that I have to send out instructions to people on how to listen to the show. Compose and send an email blast to people who had signed up for the email list. Erase the words, “If we broadcast…..” from the email several times.
MONDAY
Step 17) Visit Super Wal-mart at 6:30 am. They have ONE speakerphone on the shelf and a 50 foot cord. My bright solution? Literally going to put a mic on a speaker phone – WOW is that awful and very low-tech for such a digital endeavor. But for now, it just may work.
Step 18) Set up speaker phone.
SNAG: Phone needs 4AA batteries. Can’t find them. Run to CVS, purchase batteries, 1 hour until go live time.
Step 19) Test broadcast
SNAG: It FAILS. Looks like our provider did maintenance over the weekend and the port that we need opened has changed. PANIC. Log on and follow the pattern set by my friend, open a new port.
Step 20) Talk show guests arrived and this is the first time we check mic levels, and test broadcasting. With the new port, it seems to work. Success!
Step 21) Quick – test mobile app. Success!
Step 22) Say a quick prayer, FLIP SWITCH AT 11 AM….and we are broadcasting.
SNAG: Within 10 minutes, due to overwhelming demand, web server crashes.
Step 23) Act as tech support- helping listeners tune in the broadcast with a server crashing. Re-route traffic.
Not everyone who want to hear, could hear, but some did.
Again, while not optimal, there was demand and the MVP worked….barely. We live to tomorrow and clearly defined the words ‘minimal viable’.
The Point
The point was not to paint a scenario that mirrors the ending chaos from GoodFella’s, but to show how fast the Internet moves…..as my friend said – at the speed of Imagination.
Our “broadcast studio” is far from perfect or optimal, but for right now, the show is broadcasting.
We are working to get a little better each day. As an illustration, spent the very first day upgrading server to allow for additional web traffic, and on the second day, the server did not crash.
What have we learned
Because we could do it, doesn’t mean we should. Focus on the Minimum Viable Product, nothing more.
There is a demand for this product. Now we can look to bring in revenue to build a better product once we analyze the data to see what & how people are actually using.
But first, I need a nap.
Press Coverage of AlachuaTalks
Here is a story, WCJB did on the show.
Finally, here is how to tune into Alachuatalks and listen.
