primosaur wrote:

OK, I know this is dead, but I'm going to finally leave this. This project was a doomed idea from the beginning.

First, the host seem to have hyper-britisized everything. That may be convenient if you live there, but the vast majority of scratchers are Americans, and for them, these broadcasts would play during school or in the middle of the night. Mozboz, if you are still around to see this, I think that you were too much trying to make a radio program that would appeal to you and others in Britain - but sometimes you have to settle for less, because you've basically alienated at least 85% of your potential audience. This sort problem was a reccuring theme through what I saw of the project.

Second, the host set an incredibly high bar. First of all, there was a good chunk your long and dedicated piece of writing wouldn't get accepted if it wasn't at a level I don't think most scratchers could write at - and the host proclaimed that they had the power to decide what was good and what was bad. Of course, there are limits to total acception (no one should accept the word “the” written 100,000 times) but the project would already be scrambling for writing, and if you throw away one of the only things created because you wanted something slightly better, then you're never going to have enough writing.

And yet, this never even got to that stage. Why? It's because of the Third and final reason - time and ambition. Writing and voice acting a really long radio show for many days takes a lot of time, and there was not enough motivation to do this in the first place, especially given that people were pretty much already able to tell that the project would flop to the ground. And the thing is - Mozboz overestimated how many people would come to this badly planned radio program. Who was going to be willing to “broadcast” the shows every day? And more importantly, who was going to write for the project? Mozboz planned, if I remember correctly, SEVEN channels - I think they needed to start with one that didn't run nearly as often. The whole project expected tons of writers, coders, and more, and attempted to achieve great degrees of popularity. That's never going to happen instantly, and I don't think anyone realized that.

Mozboz, I hold no animosity towards you for this project, and I think you had good intentions. But this was never going to happen. This was a broken collaboration, and these were only some of the key problems (I didn't even mention the INSANE cloud system which, no matter how you frame it, is IMPOSSIBLE TO SET UP ON SCRATCH) that were happening across this project. I hope this serves as a cautionary tale for others looking to start collaborations.

You have to start somewhere. But please, PLEASE, KNOW what you are doing and start small.

Okay, this is an absolutely amazingly written post.

To the first point, I'm homeschooled and British so found it almost impossible to write those times for American people who go to school. If anyone suggests a better time, I would thoroughly appreciate it. I could always get people to help operate it - or another solution as written below - which would allow it to run during the night in the UK. I hope I can follow through on this project anyway, even if I have to automate the operating of the project. But you have made a very good point there.

If I am to overhaul this, the requirements also need to be changed, you're right. But the pint that I had the power to decide what is worth airing is found on almost all radio channels, TV stations, and even Scratch shops proclaim they have the right to reject anything provided they have a good reason. I don't personally see a problem here, but maybe others do. I also agree that I think I was being unreasonable - 300-600 lines?! A reasonable point is maybe 50-100. I was always being unreasonable. I think the length does deserve to change, but a 50-100 line length is fine. If I can get voice actors, I would be able to maybe do this, provided I create one mp3 for each line in a drama (there couldn't be too many dramas at once though).

For the third point, the time and ambition was a lot higher. I have some experience with music now, so that is now a thing I can provide which cuts down some of the issues. I am planning to go through with this, but at a smaller scale like you said. Now I realise there was no need for operators or stuff like that, and by that matter, no need for cloud if I simply used days since 2000 or a time system to sync broadcasts. Me being absolutely stupid, as usual. One thing you got slightly wrong was the channel count, not trying to be mean, but it was a planned three channels and a potential extra two if the project did well enough, so that's three or five. But I should also just make that one. Annoyingly, @ilovestories provided some lines for the project's planned test, who has now left Scratch and I don't know if I should still use them.

But you made an absolutely amazing point with that. This was overachieving at its finest, adn you called it out for me. Thank you.

TL;DR this was overachieving, primosaur saw that and told everyone, and now I'm suggesting ideas for a rebooted Puppy Radio. Thanks, primosaur.

Maybe before hiring everyone, you should create a test to let people know that this actually works and their hard work won't be wasted.

TeslaDummy wrote:

Maybe before hiring everyone, you should create a test to let people know that this actually works and their hard work won't be wasted.

Good idea!

I'm glad we can communicate in a civilized manner over this. I would be happy for some kind of reboot (although the cloud system really needs a complete rework, and we'd probably need to upload the entire sound file into the project ahead of time).

About time: if this was done some time around 2:00-4:00 in the afternoon British time (not sure when would be optimal for your schedule), there'd be a lot of US time zones where people would be able to listen before school. And I think 2:00-8:00 British time is reasonable for both US and Britain on weekends.

But yeah, I'd definitely be up for another, much better organized and performed attempt.

2016s4m29 wrote:

primosaur wrote:

First, the host seem to have hyper-britisized everything. That may be convenient if you live there, but the vast majority of scratchers are Americans, and for them, these broadcasts would play during school or in the middle of the night.

If the broadcasts played at a suitable time in the US. that would be the middle of the night/school times in the UK. then the radio station is not operatable.

couldn’t you just have like 3 people each representing a specific time zone?

MrZipZipZip wrote:

2016s4m29 wrote:

primosaur wrote:

First, the host seem to have hyper-britisized everything. That may be convenient if you live there, but the vast majority of scratchers are Americans, and for them, these broadcasts would play during school or in the middle of the night.

If the broadcasts played at a suitable time in the US. that would be the middle of the night/school times in the UK. then the radio station is not operatable.

couldn’t you just have like 3 people each representing a specific time zone?

You assume we have that many people. I don't think we do.
That's an alternate suggestion ; things get aired at different times in Britain and USA.

primosaur wrote:

MrZipZipZip wrote:

2016s4m29 wrote:

primosaur wrote:

First, the host seem to have hyper-britisized everything. That may be convenient if you live there, but the vast majority of scratchers are Americans, and for them, these broadcasts would play during school or in the middle of the night.

If the broadcasts played at a suitable time in the US. that would be the middle of the night/school times in the UK. then the radio station is not operatable.

couldn’t you just have like 3 people each representing a specific time zone?

You assume we have that many people. I don't think we do.
That's an alternate suggestion ; things get aired at different times in Britain and USA.

I actually thought we could have a rotation system, so every half-hour a new story plays. A rotation of four stories would be good. But instead of it being 5pm ET, 10pm BST (bad times) it would be 5pm ET, 5pm BST, 5pm everywhere. Sure, there'd be desynchronisation and certain time zones would get it before others, but that's fine.

Well I'm still down to help with code wherever I can : D