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?

2011-09 HPR Theme

2009-06 my eps for HPR and intro