This is true but even these days there are still faults that can't be sorted with remote access. Hardware can fail and not just computer hardware. Not everything is controlled by a computer. Lines can go down, equipment can fail, power supplies can fail and even for an easy fix weather can hamper efforts to get to a site.

If a line goes down and the problem requires someone from another organisation to fix it station engineers are powerless. I know of a station that went into backup and the isdn line went down. It had to be sorted at the tx site and this took a lot of time due to bad westher hampering the arquiva man's progress. This is just 1 example of a rare problem outof the stations hands.

They played Music on the Time Tunnel either last Friday or Saturday night,can't remember which.

The Time Tunnel is about the only time I've ever heard any post 1990 Madonna tracks on Heart. Usually it's one of the singles off the True Blue album,Like a Prayer or Vogue.

Not that any of those are bad records,they're not.

Oh wicked I've never heard "music" track by madonna on heart the time tunnel is the only place to hear tracks like these it's a real shame

Hearts 100 happy days comp details announced


When they say throughout the day every day I assume they mean 10am to 4pm Monday to Friday

http://www.heart.co.uk/win/heart-100...xYyKACrGHd5.99

That blurb in the above post is hilarious. It's as if somebody's tried to cram in the words "win","Heart","days","happy" and "you" in as many times as possible. it sounds like one of those lottery things you get through the post.

It sounds as if it'll be a premium phone in thing like Who's on Heart. They'll give away some sort of prize each day,which I would reckon will not be that amazing,a holiday,a telly or some vouchers or something. The main budget of the competition is presumably the £100,000 prize that all the daily winners' names go in a hat for at the end. I suppose it might be quite exciting if you're one of the daily winners,waiting for the day of the big draw. But you've only got a 1 in a 100 chance of winning it. 99 of them are going to be disappointed on the last day. That's if there's only one winner each day. If there's several,your chances of winning the big money even if you do win one of the prizes are slim indeed.

I would imagine the competition would only run during the networked shows,but you never know.

Toby just got a text apparently saying "so glad we changed our radio station at work loving the music mix" is it real we'll never know but ever so cheesy to read out whatever 😝

At least it won't drag on until Christmas, like Who's on Heart did.

It probably was real. If you're the sort of person who gets a cheap thrill out of hearing your text read out on the radio,you've obviously got a lot better chance of hearing it read out if it's praising the station and saying it's brilliant,rather than saying you think Heart is the most bland,repetitive radio station you've ever had the misfortune to have to listen to.

Incidentally they may be loving the music mix now,if they've just started listening to Heart,but give it a couple of weeks,and they keep hearing the same records over and over again...

Yeah if they do it for 100 solid days thats including Saturday and Sunday it would be finished on Wednesday 13th May

Did Who's on Heart run over the weekends? I thought it was just weekdays. Remember a lot of the weekend output is recorded,so they can't really run live phone in competitions. I think it's more likely to be the same with this,so it'll run for 20 weeks of five days and finish on a Friday in June. I can't be bothered to work out the exact date.

Whenever it finishes,we are going to be hearing a lot about it over the next few months.

Yes, they ran it on Saturday mornings. The output is live then.

Great afternoon time tunnel. Mix a few songs round Ferargal Sharkey, Simple Minds and Madonna then the year is 1985. They are all celebrating 30 years since released.

Ex Smooth listener maybe? now they will be hearing songs that make them more alive than comatosed!

saturday /sunday 7 hours is recorded which i dont think is a lot ....some stations ie anglian have 20 hours recorded /automated a day

It's less than that...
Friday: 2 hours
Saturday: 4 hours
Sunday: 3 hours + 3 hours syndicated (but still from global)

I'm sure its networked (syndication is where the show is recorded then broadcast on a few stations) on what could be regarded as the home stations.

So if Global start Heart Xtra in March i take it the station will be the same as smooth Xtrlra just relaying heart with a few hours separate. Waste of time. Smooth Xtra could have been a good idea but just playing the same as Smooth is pathetic and how they get away with that is beyond me.

2 hours Friday, 4 hours Saturday and 9 hours Sunday is the recorded hours on Heart, FYI.

Those who wonder whether 'music testing' really exists may find the latest blog from John Myers an interesting read. You can even link to a YouTube clip showing a research session in progress and learn that Richard Park can be a 'gut instinct' programmer, not just a slave to the research results!

http://myersmedia.co.uk/2015/music-r...bad-for-radio/

Love the bit where when the PD says "it doesn't test well", it really means "I don't know what I'm doing"!!

Many a true word.......

It's a great blog and Matt Deegan's comment below is also a great read. Between them they give you a clearer example of where research fits into programming a radio station.

The best programmers use research and gut instinct. The latter first and then you can test it with the former. I've never met a good programmer who didn't use gut instinct sometimes but these days with so much competition research has a role to play.

It's quite simple really instead of thinking we know what the audience ( and more importantly people who don't listen) like, why not ask them.

can you break down the 9 hours on a sunday please

From http://www.heart.co.uk/public-file/london/

" Sunday mornings between 0600 and 1200, and Sunday evenings 1900 to 2200 are pre-recorded."

Sunday mornings between 0600 and 1200 has just started recently then as that was showing as live when I last checked the public file in December the only pre recorded output was between 19:00 and 22:00

That was a very interesting read. He said,"The nation has ended up with a hit list of about 500 songs that come around day after day,month after month. Why do we only hear a few songs from an artist's hit list,and not some of their other great songs? Because everything has to be researched,everything must fit."

He could be describing Heart to a tee there. We all know that most of their Madonna songs come from the True Blue era. The only Human league track that ever gets played is Don't You Want Me,the only Police track is Every Breath You Take,if they play a Eurhythmics song,90% of the time it's Sweet Dreams Are Made of This. If they play a Spandau Ballet song,it's True. And other great 80s acts like Howard Jones,Nik Kershaw,Curiosity Killed the Cat,ABC,Deacon Blue and so on,might as well not exist outside the Sunday night show.