by Ron SaucePeople often ask, "Ron, how do you have time to listen to all those Internet radio streams that you write about?" Let's turn that inside out - today I'm writing about listening to the Internet stream of a radio station that's all time. It's the St. Louis area's new KOLK, a 500-watt station (5 watts at night) serving the Gateway City from Cottleville, Missouri, and delivering time checks every minute on the minute, 24/7/365.
"Clock Radio 1150" is the first and only affiliate of the fledgling WWV Network. You'd never know it was a national feed, however, as the presentation seemed to be tailored for St. Louis, down to the local custom of utilizing Central Daylight Time (Time zone differences are very important nuances that less savvy operators might have overlooked).
Clock Radio will slaughter some of radio programming's sacred cows, which may be just plump enough to warrant the rotating blades anyway. Bizarre metaphors aside, Clock Radio has already disproved the axiom that people don't want to hear the same thing every day at the same time, which will send software developers who write Selector code back to the drawing board in frustration.
Depending on an individual programmer's philosophy, the strict twelve-hour rotation on time checks will be either too loose or too tight. Nevertheless it is a trait of the station that even the most casual listener will notice. Perhaps we'll see some tweaking of this predictability as the days go by, or certainly by the next "Fall back, spring forward" daylight savings event.
We can hope that the sales department can secure a variety of clients soon, because the repetitive "time to get your auto glass repaired at Sweeney's Glass Works" was burning awfully fast in just the first ten minutes of listening. Although that point could be moot, given the way listeners are likely to use the station. Time will tell (pun intended), but my educated guess is that Clock Radio will be much more effective at grabbing cume than earning TSL.
Allowing for the buffering of the Internet stream we heard, it seemed like Clock Radio's time checks were for the most part accurate. The tones between time checks were pleasant to the ear and obviously AMT researched. There was a good balance of male and female voices delivering the time, although the rather light number of African-American voices for a city like St. Louis (18.1% black) should be noted. Slogans were catchy and, if you will, timely.
We do find the station's iPhone application to be a bit useless, however. It's nice to be able to hear Clock Radio anywhere your iPhone can go, but it seems strange to listen to this programming on a device that's already clearly displaying the time of day. Kudos to Fred Jacobs for selling KOLK on the iPhone app idea; a lesser man might not have succeeded.
All in all, I can proclaim now that Clock Radio 1150 is my favorite all time station. But remember, it is (so far) the only all time station.
A sample stretch of Clock Radio 1150:
10:08 am
10:09 am
10:10 am
10:11 am
10:11 am (an obvious mistake, but quickly rectified in the next minute)
10:13 am
10:14 am
10:15 am
10:16 am
Slogans: "The time that everyone at work can agree isn't close enough to quitting time," "Give us 22 minutes, and we'll give you 22 minutes," "Never too early, never too late, Clock Radio 1150 is great," "Now any radio can be a Clock Radio," and our favorite, "Parsley, sage, rosemary, and Clock Radio 1150."
