What business are we in ?

While we may be “dedicated to sharing knowledge”, we are competing for the time and attention of our Audience. Therefore we are in the Entertainment Business.

There’s no Business like …

The clue is in this statement from the about page.

Hacker Public Radio (HPR) is an Internet Radio show (podcast) that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday.

Let’s compare that to others.

Any event promoter needs to provide the Who, What, Where, and When, to their potential audience.

U2, UV Achtung Baby Live playing the Las Vegas Sphere, from 23 to the 30 June 2024.
Richard III in the Globe Theatre, All Summer. (The resident players is implied)
BBC News at Ten. (The what and when are in the name, BBC News Team is implied, as is Daily)
Season 2 of Firefly, returns to Netflix in the Fall.

A theater will have an address and a schedule for when the events occur. On TV and radio they have predefined channel locations, and often have 24x7 schedule of programs.

For Hacker Public Radio (HPR) our “venue” or channel is our RSS Feed, and our schedule is a show every weekday Monday through Friday.

A podcast production enterprise, like the NPR, BBC, etc have permanent staff who’s day job is to come in and create content. Other approaches used by Netflix, or Disney+, etc is to commission external parties to record unique content. They might also just purchase in shows. Regardless of the approach, they all have a mechanism to meet the production schedule.

Unlike other podcasters, HPR has no control of our supply chain. We do still have a contract to deliver one “product” a day Monday to Friday, but we also have no control over our distribution channels.

I think it’s important to understand just how much energy goes into managing this balancing act.

It’s the absolute core of the project, and is what takes up most of our time and energy.

Feeding the Queue

We have to feed the queue.

Control of our supply chain

A supply chain, .. is a complex logistics system that consists of facilities that convert raw materials into finished products and distribute them to end consumers or end customers. Meanwhile, supply chain management deals with the flow of goods within the supply chain in the most efficient manner. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Our supply chain is entirely dictated by the generous hosts who donate their time to recording a show. Therefore the Janitors have no control over when shows are sent in. As Janitors, we can only contact the community to remind them to send in shows.

We need your help to manage this.

Boom/Bust Supply

Usually there is a burst of contributions after a “Call for Shows”, which is itself as a result of a lull in the amount of contributions. This leads to boom and bust/saw tooth delivery of shows. There is a painful behaviour that the Janitors observe after a “Call for Shows”.

There is a burst of contributions all taking the first available slots.
The queue quickly fills up the upcoming weeks.
It takes time for the “Call for Shows” to get to everyone.
A potential host is late hearing the “Call for Shows” and sees a full queue, resulting in them not submitting a show.
Worse is that it instills the feeling of HPR “Crying Wolf”, incorrectly assuming the subsequent “Call for Shows” can safely be ignored.
After a few weeks our queue is empty and we need to put out another “Call for Shows”, which that host ignores.

The timely delivery of shows is an inherent challenge with volunteer contributions. Fortunately this is a well understood problem known as Queueing theory, and we have implemented the Reserve Queue, as a means to regulate/buffer the incoming delivery with outgoing supply.

The reserve queue is intended only to be used in the cases where there is still a gap in the schedule one week prior to release. This was known as the emergency queue, but now can also be used when the hosts don’t care when the shows are scheduled. They will be used on a first in first out basis, when there is no conflict with the scheduling guidelines. These shows contain a message alerting listeners to the fact that we had free slots that were not filled.

Scheduling Guidelines

When you are contributing a show, you decide when to post your show. The choice of slot may even encourage others to submit a show themselves.

Our observations show that there is a Goldilock Zone where there are just the right amount of free slots to encourage contributions.

Too Many free slots

When there are too many free slots some people get disheartened and don’t want to contribute to a dying project.

On the other hand too many free slots can send regular hosts into a panic to fill them. We all suffer from this, and it can lead to burnout. Fortunately we now have the Reserve Queue, where they can post their backup shows at a time that is convenient to them.

The idea that some shows are sub par because they are rushed in to fill free slots can now be put to rest. All the shows in the Reserve Queue are there because the Host did not feel the need to rush the shows out.

Too many free slots

On the other hand seeing too many free slots some people get disheartened that their show won’t be aired for weeks, so end up not recording a show in the first place.

Hacking Human Behaviour

So the HPR Community can influence the supply chain by been smart about how we schedule the shows.

When you upload consider the Scheduling Guidelines when picking your slot.

You must have your audio recording ready to upload before you pick a slot.
New hosts, Interviews, and other time critical shows should use the first free slot.
Always try and fill any free slots that are available in the upcoming two weeks.
When the queue is filling up then leave some slots free for new contributors.
Post non urgent shows into the first empty week.
If you are uploading a series of shows then post them one every two weeks.
If you have a non urgent show that is timeless, then add every second show to the Reserve Queue.

This way your (person hearing this) actions, give the HPR Community complete control over the supply of shows in a general sense.

Remember the HPR Community have not missed a day since September 2009.

Janitors Covenant

The Janitors will continue to process and post the shows, so long as you, the HPR community, continue to send them in. The Janitors Covenant is to continue to produce shows as long as people send them in. If people stop sending them in we will shut the project down with grace and a big send off.

The order of the Mop

Before we go any further we should give a nod to the people who give up their free time to keep the shows pumping.

Distribution Channels

Getting our podcast distributed is no problem what so ever.

While NPR, BBC, Netflix, Disney+, etc can afford to record unique content, unique content is very, very expensive. Amazon, Apple and Spotify may have the resources to do this, but they and others, make use of the freely available content to inflate their inventory of content.

We provide these platforms with our feed and our blessing. So long as they adhere to the Creative Commons Attribution Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License. Our prime directive at work.

We publish a RSS feed, and that feed is then picked up by others such as Archive.org, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio, iTunes, Listen Notes, MixCloud, PlayerFM, Podchaser, Radio.net, Spotify, Top Podcasts and now for some reason IMDB.

We have no control over what they do with the feed, how often the use it, if they cache it, if they use the images from it, if the show the explicit tag, or as in this case, if they display the host or not.

That’s why you can help by taking up the mop and becoming the Janitor for your Distribution Channel.