January 29, 2024
Update Technology Plan for NCRA
The National Campus and Community Radio Association (NCRA) represents campus and community radio stations across Canada. Their members are as diverse as the communities that made them, with programming offered in over 65 languages across the country! NCRA members are non-profit community-based stations, and many participate in local projects and fundraising, constantly giving back every penny put in.
The Challenge
The goal of the NCRA's Technology Plan is to "revolutionize Canada's campus, community, and Indigenous radio landscape". The plan was developed in the context of significant changes in radio broadcasting and the domestic online environment. Commercial radio stations are closing their doors due to a lack of revenue, providing an opportunity for more grassroots stations to develop and grow. Community radio is increasingly popular among casual and regular listeners. The Technology Plan aims to take advantage of this opportunity.
The goal was to look for technology that would make it possible for radio stations to develop stronger data and communication systems, while reducing the time spent on operational tasks. Station and show discoverability for listeners and easy connections to new audiences is also an important goal, especially in light of stations not being able to advertise on some US based social media as a result of Bill C-18.
The main elements of the technology plan were to build on NCRA's Earshot Distro music distribution platform, by incorporating logging to be able to provide tracking for when and where songs have been played to have charts for radio stations and stats for artists that have submitted their songs.
The Solution
Northern Village built on its experience in creating RadioApp, our SaSS product that allows radio stations to maintain CRTC and SOCAN logs (industry regulators), while keeping program and schedule pages up to date.
After reviewing NCRA's past research, we conducted a technical reviews of potential software that could be used as part of the solution and interviewed key stakeholders including CRTC and SOCAN. Through these reviews we were able to narrow our scope and create system flows and identify gaps. Then, we conducted a survey of radio stations to better understand the software that is currently being used, the effectiveness of the softwares as well as the pain points. A targeted group of stations were identified for interviews to drill down for a better understanding of needs across the spectrum of rural vs urban, cultural representations and budget diversity. In addition to surveying the software, we looked at ways that the new data could contribute to an increase in discoverability of member stations and the campus and community radio sector in general.
The results were presented at the Station Manager's Summit in January 2024 and assembled into a final report of three potential paths that would meet the targets and provide financial as well as schedule options.
Working Together
Northern Village is proud to be considered a Partner of the NCRA to use our web and software experience to look for ways to help NCRA and its radio stations be more effective in providing campus and community radio. We are also happy to provide discounts for software and services for NCRA member stations.