Today was quite an important day for myself and all the people who have been deprived of real music, as The Sunday Alternative returned after a break. I’m going to keep the name intact but to distinguish it from the forthcoming video series, a slight change of title is in order. It will still be the show I pictured, but called The Sunday Alternative Visual Aid. That title would have been the name of the video highlights package that accompanied the radio show on Trent Sound, had it actually happened.

To save myself from potential mishaps on the day, I had uploaded the podcast in the early hours of this morning as sometimes this can go wrong, especially when I have a lot riding on it. The whole thing was posted on The Sunday Alternative blog with links to the artists, a good twelve hours before lunchtime when it officially dropped. Really keen listeners could, if they wanted to, keep a sneaky eye on the blog and grab bragging rights on being the first person to listen to it.

Back to lunchtime however, and at midday I started the social media advertising on Twitter, and to a lesser extent Facebook. It isn’t really worth using Facebook as the site is pretty much dead these days. Ever since Sherwood Radio my Facebook friends list have had trouble with the concept of interaction. You’re sitting at a computer to listen so openening another window or tab to log in to Facebook shouldn’t be a massive problem, (apart from the buffering you encounter while Facebook takes a month to load). I advertised it on Facebook and gained a few shares and ‘likes’ so it wasn’t a total waste of time. 

My main reason for embedding the podcast into the blog was so that I was able to monitor how many people clicked on it. Going on the assumption that a blog read counted as a listen, (otherwise it is a pretty pointless visit to the page), it was satisfying to see that in the hour between the first advertising blitz and turning off the computer to go to my dad’s for lunch, there had been fifty hits. Fifty hits in an hour isn’t too bad, especially as the podcast can be downloaded at any time of the day or night, as opposed to previously when people had to listen when it was broadcast. Sunday is a pretty good day to have a radio show as more people are at home; I saw an increase in listeners when the show moved to Sunday lunchtimes, but now there’s the advantage of people who are working can download the podcast to listen to on the journey. A quality podcast and double pay, some people are just so lucky. The same is true for tomorrow as it’s a Bank Holiday so it will feel like a Sunday.

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