Trial Balloon: December 19, 2008 Archive

We are making adjustments as we go here at the expansive Radio Heartland Research and Development Campus.

Yesterday, I took a hike over to Building 23 and discovered that the musicologists had prepared a long list of Christmas music that has been scientifically proven to delight all listeners to each one of the known radio formats. I watched as a brief ceremony took place - the list was presented, with a tray of Christmas cookies, to HAL, the computer who schedules our days here at Radio Heartland. HAL ingested the list and scanned the cookies, but did not eat. Our staff of programmers take HAL's reaction as a sign that he will soon begin playing back a jolly, seasonal assortment of appropriate but not overused tunes almost immediately, and they will appear once or twice an hour between now and December 25th.

Another development: Radio Heartland has now made it on to the MPR Iphone and Ipod Touch application. Download the application and listen to all MPR's services!
If you are within range of your phone or WiFi network, you should be able to plug your headphones into an Iphone or Ipod Touch and listen while you walk around, amazed, just the way we were when the Walkman was a brand new idea and we were suddenly freed from having to be in the same room with the radio. Try it and let us know if this path to private listening works for you! I was able to listen through my Ipod Touch while making turkey tomato barley soup last night. I was so enthralled, I missed the part of the recipe that called for quick barley and used very, very slow barley instead. I had the opportunity to listen for a long time. And because I was using headphones, the nice music overwhelmed the pre-digestive grumbling from down below.

And a wave of listener confusion about our complicated re-broadcast schedule for the Dale Connelly Show has led us to add a third live hour each weekday morning, from 8 to 9 am central time. This third daily hour will eliminate the problem of immediate, mind numbing repetition that caused so many complaints. Hour 3 will be heard only once each day, unless the quality control experts in building 14 decide as part of their daily standards and practices meeting that hours 1 or 2 were somehow lacking. In such an unlikely event, hour 3 will be promoted, and will take the place of the offending substandard segment during the midday broadcast between 11 and 2.
See? We fixed the problem, but kept it complicated.
That's progress!