hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4538.txt

Episode: 4538
Title: HPR Branding
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4538/hpr4538.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:13:28 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4538, for 2025-12-24
Today's show is entitled, "HPR Branding"
The host is Ken Fallon and the duration is 00:09:53
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "Ken explains why the intro and outro are as they are"
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today I want to talk to you about the HPR branding because there was a comment on Mastodon where somebody was getting irate over the intro and outro.
Not 100% sure it was related to the intro and outro as we make it or whether somebody else had added on an additional wrapper on top of that.
I tried contacting the person in various different ways and I'm still waiting on them to get back to me.
But if you're listening to this on a platform that is adding additional information other than what is described in this episode,
can you please get in touch with me or any of the other janitors here at HPR with the email address admin at hackerpublicradio.org
or even put a comment here on this episode with a link to the platform and RSS feed.
So first of all, let me explain about the HPR branding, what it is, why we do it.
So the branding itself has got an intro and an outro and mostly I think people are worried about the intro.
So let's talk about the duration.
It'll always be 30 seconds long and in some edge cases it might be slightly longer.
The following table is going to help you put some context on that and it gives the percentage of each show related to the intro length related to the length of the show itself.
So an average show of 29 minutes 30 seconds, it comprises 1.7% of the show.
Of our longest show, 7 hours and 27 minutes, it comprised 0.1% of the show.
And of our shortest show, which is 16 seconds long, it comprised 187.5% of the episode.
But I think keeping it around the 30 seconds is not too bad.
So the generation of the intro is done using the process underscore episode script, which is on our GitLab repository and it pulls down information from the database using the say.php file, which is also on our repository.
The text is created using the Piper text-to-speech engine and we previously used eSpeak and Mary TTS and we're always open to suggestions and how to improve it.
The text is played over the HPR theme music and the theme music is provided by SlickZero without a copyright requirement.
And the arrangement that we're currently using is by Mastiasio.
Apologise for getting that wrong.
And it's released under a Creative Commons share like 4.0 international license.
And the text message itself conforms to the who, what, when, where and why are the five W's as Wikipedia refers to it.
The five W's is a checklist used in journalism to ensure that the lead contains all the essential story points.
As far back as 1913, reporters were thought that the lead should answer these questions about the situation being reported.
So I'll break down each of the components that make up the message that we deliver in the intro and explain which of those that we're addressing.
So with the first sentence, we address what, when and where.
And the first sentence is always, this is hacker public radio episode with the show ID for like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, then the day, number of the month and the month of the year.
Saying the name of the show at the beginning of an episode is called Establishing Brand Recognition.
It's standard for podcasts, TV, radio shows, as well as broadcast mentions, not to mention pre-rolls in a movie.
We started to do it because some of our visually impaired users appreciated knowing what show is playing.
Now, the same reason can be applied to everyone as the use of visual controlled user interfaces has diminished.
With most people controlling their playlists via headsets, voice controls or just automatic playlists.
Saying the show ID and date is common where there are a lot of episodes, for example, a news or a weather show.
But it is often skipped over in places where the content is sufficient to identify the episode.
For example, the last episode of the Foo Bar podcast or last week's Saturday Night Live.
We include the show ID and date to allow the listener to reference an episode easily.
As we have literally thousands of shows, we need to help people identify which show they're listening to so that it can be easily shared and commented on.
The next sentence is always today's show is entitled and then the title of the episode.
And if the episode is part of a series, we will say it is part of a series and we will always include this show synopsis.
And that covers the what and the why aspect.
This tells the listener what the show is about.
It allows them to skip the episode if they wish.
And they may wish to do that for many reasons.
For example, because they're not interested in the topic,
they may wish to listen to it while they're in front of a computer so that they can reference the accompanying show note.
They might be listening in public and the topic might not be appropriate for general public consumption.
The next part then will either be this is the first show of our new host with the host name,
or this is the multiple of 10 show of host name.
So this is the 10th, 20th, 100th show of host name,
or simply it is hosted by and the person's name.
And that covers the who aspect of the five W's.
We are required by the Creative Commons Attribution Share,
like International CC by SA Licence that we use,
to credit our hosts.
And this is where we do that.
We also think it's important to highlight new hosts especially,
so our community will encourage them to continue to contribute more.
And it is also nice to call out hosts that are contributing a lot
by highlighting each 10th show that they send in.
We continue then saying that,
and it is about so many minutes long.
And this covers the where aspect,
more, yeah, like giving people an idea of the duration.
This tells people how long the show is.
Now, normal broadcasters fit neatly into a standard TV and radio schedule.
They have to do it.
And many podcasters follow the same tradition
of having episode of a predictable length,
30 minutes and an hour.
But there's never been a reason in podcasting to do that.
And HPR places no restriction on them.
That is the effect though, that as we saw earlier,
the shows can range from 16 seconds up to seven and a half hours.
So, depending on the length of your commute,
you do really need to know how long the show is going.
We do include a warning.
Additionally, the six Ws, to be honest.
And we include, it carries a clean flag
or it carries an explicit tag.
And this is common with broadcasters
when dealing with a topic that might be disturbing to some people.
Quite often they'll give a phone number of a support line
that you can contact if it troubles you.
And then back to the what again,
we include the summary saying the summary is,
and we read out the summary.
This also tells the listener what the show is about.
And then finally, we close off in the event
that the show is not released under a Creative Commons CC by SA license.
We say today's show is licensed under a,
maybe a FreeBSD license or something else,
whatever is appropriate.
And that is required by the licensing terms we're releasing episodes.
So, that covers the intro.
There's been lots of discussion about it, as I said.
And then we have the outro.
Same theme music, same length.
Arrangement by Slick Zero and Maestrasio.
So, the voiceover text is recorded by Manon
and there's no copyright applied.
And it goes,
you have been listening to Hacker Public Radio
at hackerpublicradio.org.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
Again, we are saying what you have been listening to
and we're plugging the fact that this is a community podcast
where the shows are recorded by community volunteers.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, we continue,
then click on the contribute link to find out how easy it really is.
Here we are trying to get hosts in,
trying to keep new episodes,
trying to keep the community alive.
And then we go on to hosting for HPR
has been kindly provided by anhonesthost.com,
the Internet Archive and rsync.net.
And there we're thanking the people who provide
the hosting for our platform,
without which we could not distribute our media.
And then the final de facto,
unless otherwise stated,
today's show is released under a Creative Commons CC by SA license.
Now, a lot of people on other platforms
may not even know what that is.
And this, listening to the Hacker Public Radio podcast,
may be the first introduction to what Creative Commons is,
what free culture is, licensing and they.
So thank you very much for listening
and tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of Hacker Public.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.org.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording podcast, click on our upload link
to find out how easy it is.
Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by an AnHonestHost.com, the Internet Archive,
rsync.net, and our mirror network.
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.