Justify feed

[dward42586]

I started a feed a few weeks ago. I'm averaging maybe 2-3 listeners.

I have included all the active freqs for law and fire. Activity is sporadic. It,s a low population county.

I'm thinking this feed is not worth tying up a scanner and PC for.

I would like your opinions on this.

Feed is Oklahoma, Pawnee County.

Thanks.

 

[nofdexplorer406]

Its your personal Preference i prefer a feed with hardly no activity than no feed when a major incident breaks out. your Population is roughly 16,500

Biggest thing is advertise Facebook to your friends, local newspaper Facebook wall, i even go as far as when severe weather comes in make people tune in to get the fastest weather info people only get out of it what you put into it if they dont know about it they wont use it but it its advertised it may surge users whenever they hear sirens, if we get a big fire or PD incident i even do the 1 hr incident posting where it broadcasts to all of RR users

 

[ScanYak]

I think you bring up a good question. The answer helps us as feed providers understand why we do what we do. Is it for our enjoyment and learning experience? Or is it that we provide a service? Do we feel better the higher number of listeners we can get?

When I started over ten years ago, long before RR, I found I could do it with software already on my PC. Having retired after 30 years from a professional fire dept. I thought wouldn't it be fun to stream fire and police radio traffic. I soon discovered I was the only one in the State that was doing it and most people didn't understand the connection with a scanner and the internet.

The two parts of the goal I have strived for is (1) What do people want to listen to? Some of the channels I like to listen to I don't stream because listeners don't understand what is going on. It takes a trained ear to visualize what is taking place. The police channel I stream is locked on that frequency, most listeners have trouble understanding partial traffic. It's not as much what we are hearing, it is what we might think we are missing. Too many channels causes confusion. (2) Present the best quality audio. Digital presents a problem... distortion. I have added equipment, like mixer, equalizer and a dynamic processor to get the best quality. With 7 scanners and a dedicated HP Thin Client streaming doesn't tie up anything for me.

I believe if you're not having fun, no matter the number of listener, don't do it. RR posts the new streams that are launch but it would be interesting to see those the fall away.

Just thinking,

 

[n0nhp]

I also started streaming long before RR offered their servers to the community. My main interest was to listen to my own scanners, I was working out of the country for 6 months of they year and the traffic where I was working was generally not all that interesting. I limited my connections to 5 users and almost never limited out. I fed that way for two or three years. Along came ScanAmerica and they offered to host the feed for free, allowing me to go to a stereo feed and dropping my user limit. I was seeing on the order of 5 to 7 users during the two or three years with them. Gordon sold the site to Lindsay who already had a base of users for the database and forum. That increased my users slowly but surely for a year or two. The biggest jump in users took place since the introduction of the smart phone and the various police scanner apps. I now show a minimum daily use of 20 or so listeners and maximum of around 80. During a wildfire this summer I topped out over 200.
Basically what I am saying is that you are not going to get that kind of traffic in a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months unless you happen to be feeding a very large metropolis that is constant action. If you are enjoying providing the service and are feeding what you like to listen to (with the TOS in mind) the listeners will slowly find the site and start listening. If it feels that you are putting too much into the hardware and upkeep and are not enjoying what you do, by all means pull the plug. Just researching the archives will show you a number of feed providers that have gotten really soured on the site and have committed "RRicide" before pulling the plug.

Bruce

 

[shockhazard69]

My feed averages around 25 users and peaks about 40-50. If people hear sirens, that goes up. As it does when the local news website posts a link to the scanner when there is a major event going on. The same website keeps a smaller link on their page at all times and the admin lets me know about problems if there are any. I have been in the top 50 feeds many times and have had a maximum of 348 users listening during a major snow storm this past winter. The local police department has also recently switched to P25 and not many people want to buy a new scanner, so that increases listeners.

I like the fact that I can open an app on my phone and listen from anywhere.

 

[jeatock]

Keep the feed. Consider it a public service.

My county is also about 17K population and normally peaceful. I average 2-3 users on my feed, usually local volunteer fire chiefs or officers whose day job requires that they work out of their districts but who have the ability to keep tabs on activity via their smartphone or office computer. It is a way of knowing when they should trend towards home (or not) if it hits the fan and they're out of radio range.

Joplin, MO has 5 listeners right now (I just checked). 9,000 users were online a year ago in May.

While the majority of Joplin listeners were casual users, I suspect a sizeable portion of them were responders, officials and others actually involved in the recovery and mitigation. It wouldn't suprise me that the SEMA communications desk a hundred miles away in Jefferson City, or FEMA regional coordinators were among them. During a major incident, radios will be in short supply. Internet is plentiful.

Yes, there are officials out there that discourage communications transparency, legitimate needs for communications security, and abuse of the system by those operating in the "gray areas" of the law. That said, there are also tremendous benefits. Lindsay Blanton is to be congratulated for providing a valuable service to the responder community.

 

[dward42586]

Great responses. I'm staying on. Just a few days after I got the feed set up, we had a major wildfire just south of me. I had 80 listeners on. I added the state fire freqs to the feed. I now better understand the public service it provides in emergencies.

Thanks for your wisdom.

Dave Ward NB5B