UK Radio Aid

It was made at Capital in London, then fed down to GWR Bristol for feeding out to local stations. What they did with the commercial breaks was their own business.

Was nice to see the first colaboration between Capital and GWR since the merger was approved.

Why did it have to go via Bristol? Don't Capital have their own way of feeding to stations? What happens during Hit 40 UK?

It was fed out to stations via - IRN Channels 3 and 4 (which normally feed Hit 40 UK and Smash Hits Chart on a Sunday).

The programme audio was continuous with all local opt-out windows being filled with broadcast material from London should the relevant local stations not wish to fill with local content. A two second gap at the beginning and end of each local window allowed local opt-out and opt-in.

All audio came from Capital in London - GWR Stations in the Mids were fed this way there was no routing through Bristol as far as I am aware from collegues.

There were options to take the feed from SKY and Freeview (national Century, The Hits and Life on DAB - I gather these feeds just broadcast the audio constantly from London including the filler material).

Interesting that thanks to WRN the event also will be relayed globally as follows:

Across North America including the USA, Canada, the Caribbean and Central America via Intelsat Americas 5

Across Europe, Middle East and North Africa via the Hot Bird 6 satellite

Across Africa and the Asia Pacific region via Thaicom 3

If it does stop at 6, why is it that the items they put up on eBay don't end till a couple more days?

Presumably they thought they'd fetch more money if they were left on longer.

Wouldn't this have worked better over a weekend?
The majority of people would have been at work, or school etc, and I would have thought a big audience for this would have been families, who would have been split up during the day due to work etc.
I would have liked to have listened to this otherwise...

Just seemed a bit silly putting it on a work/schoolday

Not strictly a fair comparison, statmuxing won't be particularly happy with loads of identical feeds so there may have been artifacts you wouldn't normally get

The Slogan was An Hour of your wages, which was asking people to donate an hour of their pay to UK Radio Aid, so they probably thought it was better to have it on a working day. All the shops I went into that day had it on anyway, so I assume many people were listening.

Statistically radio listening is at its highest on a Monday. It then trails off slightly towards the end of the week and is at its lowest at the weekend.

Interesting, are there any explanations as to why?

Rajar's arguably flawed surveying methods could be partly to blame. AIUI respondents start filling in their diaries on a Monday, I suspect full of good intentions. By the end of the week they probably can't be arsed with it any more and so forget to fill it in. I heard that in America when they were using a similar system, they changed the day surveying started and the peak listening day shifted accordingly.

To be fair though, people do also have daily routines during the week, and so radio often becomes part of this whether it be listening in the car when commuting or in the workplace. This tends not to happen so much at the weekend, and so radio listening tends to be a bit lower.

Looking at the listings on Monday, certainly for Beacon FM, it appears Beacon only broadcast as itself between 3 & 6 am & between 6pm & 7pm, at other times as part of a network.

While I can't speak for 3 till 6am, why did they only broadcast as themselves for an hour in the evening, before reverting back to network programing? (Something called 'Core Control', I believe !)

Didn't seem worth it IMO, unless the programme concerned was a compilation of the day's local events, if any !