HPR Branding

This episode refers to the initial release of https://repo.anhonesthost.net/HPR/hpr_documentation/src/branch/main/branding.md

The Intro

Duration

It will always be 30 seconds long and in some edge cases may be slightly longer. The following table will help put that into context. It gives the percentage of the show the intro takes related to the length of the shows.

  1.7% of an average show (29 minutes 30 seconds)
  0.1% of our longest show (7 hours 27 minutes)
187.5% of our shortest show (16 seconds)

Breakdown

Generation

The intro is generated by the  process_episode.bash  script and uses the  say.php  file to generate the data.

The text is  created  using  piper test to speech . It was previously created using  espeak , and we are open to  suggestions  on how to improve it.

The text is played over the HPR Theme Music

Theme Music Credits

The background is an arrangement by  Maestraccio  which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)  license, of the HPR Theme, composed by  slick0  which has  No Copyright  applied.

Message

To effectively communicate an event it’s important to convey the answers to  Who? ,  What? ,  When? ,  Where? , and  Why?

The Five Ws is a checklist used in journalism to ensure that the lead contains all the essential points of a story. As far back as 1913, reporters were taught that the lead should answer these questions about the situation being reported.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws

What?, When?, Where?

The first sentence is always  This is Hacker Public Radio episode (show id) for “(day of week)” the “(day number)” of “(month and year).

Saying the name of the show at the beginning of an episode is called establishing  brand recognition . It is standard for podcasts, TV and Radio shows as well as on broadcast networks, not to mention the pre-rolls in a movie.

We started to do it because some of our Visually Impaired users appreciated knowing what show is playing. Now the same reason can be applied to everyone as the use of visual controlled  User interfaces  have diminished. Most people control the playlist with headset or voice controls.

Saying the show id, and date is common where there are a lot of episodes eg: news or weather shows. It is often skipped where the content is sufficient to identify the episode, eg “the last episode of the foo bar baz podcast, or the last Saturday Night Live”

We include the show id and date to allow the listener to refer to the episode easily. As we have literally thousands of shows, we need to help people identify which show they are now listening to, so that it can be easily shared, or commented on.

What? Why?

We always include  Today’s show is entitled. (title) . If the episode is part of a series then we also include  It is part of the series (series name) . We always include the show  (synopsis) .

This tells the listener what the show is about. It allows them to skip the episode if they wish. They may wish to do this for many reasons, for example:

• because they are not interested in the topic,
• they wish to listen to it while in front of a computer to reference the accompanying show notes,
• they are listening in public and the topic might not be appropriate.

Who?

The next part will either be  It is the first show by new host (host name) ,  It is the (multiple of 10)th show of (host name) , or  It is hosted by (host name)

We are required by the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)  license to credit our hosts, so we do.

We think it’s important to highlight new hosts especially, so our community we encourage them to continue to contribute.

It’s also nice to call out hosts who have been contributing a lot by highlighting each 10th show they send in.

Where?

We always include  and is about (minutes)minutes long  to give people an idea of how long the show is.

Normal broadcasts have to fit neatly into a standard TV/Radio Broadcast schedule. Many podcasters now follow the same tradition of having episodes of a predictable length. Eg: 30 minutes or an hour.

On HPR,  there is no restriction on how long the show can be  so it’s desirable to give the listener a way to know how long the episode is so they can plan accordingly.

Warning

We always include either  It carries a clean flag  or  It carries an explicit flag .

This is also common for broadcasts where they are dealing with a topic that may be disturbing to some people.

What

We always include  The summary is. (summary) .

As this also tells the listener what the show is about.

License

In the event that the show is not released  CC-BY-SA  we include  Todays show is licensed under a (license_long_name) license.

Outro

Theme Music Credits

The background is an arrangement by  Maestraccio  which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)  license, of the HPR Theme, composed by  slick0  which has  No Copyright  applied.

Over the music is the following text recorded by  Manon  which has  No Copyright  applied.

You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at  hackerpublicradio.org .

Today’s show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.

If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is.

Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by  anhonesthost.com , the  Internet Archive  and  rsync.net .

Unless otherwise stated, today’s show is released under a  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)  license.

Discussions about the HPR Theme

• 2023-04 intro
• 2022-03 Great Intro
• 2022-03 TTS
• 2022-03 The TTS voice
• 2021-11 Theme - was “Possible cause and solution to subscriber attrition(trying again without encryption)”
• 2020-08 the voice
• 2019-11 Ken’s Voice Is Better Than espeak
• 2018-09 HPR Branding
• 2018-09 Accordion outro
• 2018-10 Intro volume
• 2018-10 TTS over intro music
• 2016-02 speech synthesis during intro
• 2015-12 How to check if the intro and outro are added
• 2015-02 Intro and Outro
• 2014-12 Outro Theme
• 2014-12 Bug Fix HPR Intros
• 2014-11 MaryTTS, clipping
• 2014-11 An HPR Theme Question, And First Time Member
• 2014-02 What’s the word on intro and outro clips?https://lists.hackerpublicradio.com/pipermail/hpr/2014-September/002266.html
• 2011-09 HPR Theme
• 2009-06 my eps for HPR and intro