Picture from Tapibook
I'm not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination but today was especially difficult. Mandi woke me up a couple of times and I am aware that I told her that I would be up 'in a minute' before drifting back off to sleep until it was far too late for me to do any podcast admin. All I had time for was a quick shower before getting dressed and heading to my dad's for lunch. Thankfully, I wasn't to blame as Mandi was still getting ready when I was waiting to leave the house so it was nice to be able to take some kind of high ground, not something I get to do too often. The upshot of this of course is that the publicity drive couldn't take place until later in the day and I had an appointment in the evening that meant that time was very much fighting against me; who said that Sunday was a day of rest?
Thankfully the listening figures weren't hurt too much and by the time I checked later in the day (after my appointment) they had levelled out to the usual Sunday average. Usually the numbers climb slightly during the week thanks to the link being under the blog every day, sadly the same can't be said about PayPal donations which enjoy an even slower trickle. On Saturday while I record the newest edition I tweet a link to the previous one with sufficient people tagged in for those cynical retweets and that seems to help. If everyone who listened donated a pound, or even 50p, then I would be able to kick off with creating some entertainment to be enjoyed online completely free of charge.
My appointment was with an online radio station that is relaunching soon as part of a network of local radio stations. I'm not entirely sure that local radio is really a thing on the Internet but I do agree that local radio is an important thing that is on the decline and so the Internet is really the place to go. Nottingham's local radio output is basically BBC Nottingham and Gem which is one of those irritating 'same six songs, all day long' stations. Radio Trent suffered the same fate as many local commercial stations when it was swallowed by Capital FM so in theory Capital is a national station apart from the breakfast show. Trent Sound was founded with the intention of plugging the gap left by Radio Trent, an online version of Radio Trent was attempted but it died due to it being produced nowhere near Nottingham.
While this new station is Nottingham based, they want to use a certain amount of footage again in other areas. A live music show would syndicate through the local stations with videos appearing on the relevant Facebook pages. It sounds like an ambitious project and although I have been given time to come up with an answer I don't feel as if The Sunday Alternative would work on there as I have achieved quite a lot with that name and have certain issues with control of content, something which I argued a fair amount about when on Trent Sound. The idea of doing some other stuff is appealing but only on a 'keeping my hand in' basis. Gary and I came up with a series idea for Bank Holiday specials but as usual we never followed it up.
As it stands The Sunday Alternative is going well as a podcast and now a live show with series coming up, and although I enjoy live radio I don't feel that this is the place for it. Besides, I had urgent business to get home to - we are nearly at the end of the Keeping Up Appearances box set.
The Sunday Alternative #47 is available from here.
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July Housekeeping
Bags and T-Shirts are still available from here. All money goes in the fund. Feel free to browse the shop page while you're there.
If you donate £5 or more, you get to choose a song for me to cover on kazoo for a YouTube video, details here.
Seriously, I am grateful for the donations so if you haven't got round to it yet, I thank you in advance.
steveEoliver@gmail.com
