Sustainer
URY is not usually a 24-hour radio station, so it has a sustainer whose job is to play something during downtime to make sure URY never broadcasts dead air.
This page is a tribute to the various sustainer systems/services that URY has had over the years.
Sustainer Technology Through The Ages
19??-19?? Other radio stations
Before URY had its own sustainer, it broadcast a feed from other radio stations. The 80s Technical Manual makes reference to Viking FM being the radio station in this role in 1988.
It is currently not known to this wiki what URY did back in its foundation years (BBC feed? Dead air? Caroline!?), as commercial independent radio wasn't exactly around back then.
The earliest schedules available from archives of the URY website shed no light on this, sadly.
19??-1998 Student Radio Network
Reference is made between Summer 1997 and Summer 1998 of URY relying on the Student Radio Network for out-of-hours broadcasting. The wiki team currently don't know much about the SRN, but it was likely similar to the Student Broadcast Network URY later used.
1998-2004 Student Broadcast Network
In the late 90s and early 00s the sustainer service came from the Student Broadcast Network who broadcast news, music and programming on a national basis for student radio.
While we're not broadcasting our own programmes, we relay the Student Broadcast Network. Broadcasting live via satellite, SBN is a service exclusively for student radio stations in the UK. During the day it provides stations with a non-stop mix of student orientated music with news on the hour every hour. Throughout the night there's a line-up of student programmes, combining live shows from their studios in London and programmes provided by student radio stations around the country.
In addition to using SBN to cover blank space in the schedule overnight, URY also used to take SBN "compulsory programming" in exchange for circa £6k per year of additional funding. Compulsory programming included SBN Breakfast from 08:00 to 09:00 every weekday; and typically a 1 hour specialist music show sometime between 21:00 and 00:00 every weekday. Compulsory shows can often be seen on URY's printed schedules in a different colour, to indicate that they are SBN rather than URY shows. URY was also required to take news and adverts from SBN at the top of every hour.
SBN's business model was advertising-based. All compulsory shows were sponsored by paying advertisers, who were name-checked repeatedly throughout. Around 30 seconds of adverts would also typically follow the news at the top of each hour (the variability in the number and length of adverts after each news bulletin was handled by SBN playing 3 DTMF tones after the last advert - this would tell the presenter to drop the SBN fader and start their show). SBN would then pass a share of their advertising income on to their subscriber stations.
Compulsory show slots were often used to deliver face-to-face training to aspiring presenters in Studio 1, as it was rare for S1 to be available otherwise.
SBN went into administration in summer 2004. SBN owed URY £6k for the 2003/04 academic year, which was never paid, leaving a black hole in URY's budget and requiring significant changes to YUSU's 2004/05 societies budget to absorb. This was one of the events that drove the creation of York University Media (YUM), to give the media societies greater collective bargaining power with YUSU.
As a piece of URY History, there's a mini-disk containing 2 hours of pre-recorded SBN programming floating around the office that dates from circa 2000/2001.
2004-???? Overnight Owen
More information needed.
"Overnight Owen", named after Owen Murphy (the then Station Manager), was introduced during the summer of 2004 to replace SBN (see above). Between SBN going into administration and Overnight Owen being deployed, URY was largely sustained using a Norah Jones album on repeat as an emergency measure to avoid dead air.
2012-present INSIDIOUS TONES
The current jukebox system is provided by a LiquidSoap system affectionately named "If No Show, I Do An Instantly Organised Unending Show: Totally Outrageous Nonstop Entertainment System", or INSIDIOUS TONES for short (also known as just iTones).
Branding
Though currently known as the URY Jukebox, the sustainer service previously went by other names:
- Non-Stop Music
- URY Music Jukebox
- Overnight Owen