The Foundation – Stations

We’re all familiar with radio stations, otherwise known as broadcasters, who produce the content we catalog and make available in our APIs.

Stations may be terrestrial, meaning they have a physical transmitter and a (usually government) assigned frequency, like 94.5 FM. We consider DAB, long-wave, short-wave, and other less familiar broadcast technologies terrestrial as well. However, we reserve a special satellite classification for Sirius-XM.

Stations may also be internet-only, meaning they don’t transmit over-the-air, but offer one or more online streams. Most internet-only stations are location-agnostic – while they originate from a physical location, their content doesn’t have a “local” perspective.

If a station broadcasts over the air, we maintain its frequency and band, along with information about its reach so that we can offer an accurate dial for users. The dial is roughly what you might see if you get in your car and turn on the radio.

Streams

Almost half of the stations in our guide provide a stream, which is nothing more than URL that can be interpreted by a player to render audio and/or video content. More detail on streams may be found in their dedicated section.

Genres

Radio stations fit into one or more genres – a kind of tag or format, if you will – that describes the type of content they air. Genres fall into three broad categories – music – Classic Rock, Reggae, etc – spoken – News, Public, Entertainment, etc – and sports. Genres may be related to one another, which forms the basis for one browse experience in the directory.

Affiliates

Each station may be an affiliate of zero or more radio networks or broadcast associations. We use the term loosely, so that it might imply ownership (e.g., a ClearChannel station), a content distribution relationship (e.g., PRI), or simple affiliation. To be clear, while the station is technically the affiliate of something, we always use the term “affiliate” to describe the “something” with which it’s affiliated. In other words, we call NPR, ESPN, the BBC, etc, affiliates. Affiliates may be tied together to form the basis of another browse experience, such as a reviewing major internet-only broadcasters.

Personalities and Content – Shows

While some stations are like music services, playing a continuous set of songs, many others offer distinct shows at specific times of the day. A show, or program, as it can also be called, usually has a host and airs on a schedule, like Monday through Friday at 3pm. A number of shows are syndicated and air on dozens, if not hundreds, of individual stations. We maintain all of this information so that we can create a lineup, or calendar, of content.

There is a special kind of show we call an event. These occur at a specific time and date and do not recur. Sports games and political speeches are two frequent examples. Events are part of the same lineup as regular shows, but they may pre-empt them.

Our representation of a recurring show is abstract, but when we can we also track topics. Also known as episodes, these items give you specific information about what’s on the show for a specific day, like guests or conversation topics. Shows that support podcasting of previous episodes will see them incorporated in our directory.

That’s it for radio. Now let’s look at the concepts specific to RadioTime.