Radio advert blocker

[Cursitor Doom]

Hi all,

I've found the previously rather good BBC R4 and UK radio in general to be pretty much intolerable nowadays, not being into minority and wimmins' issues etc., so have switched to internet radio, which is great, except some of the most interesting stations have ***way*** too many adverts for my liking. So the question is, what can be done to remove them?

I've thought about intercepting the audio output, writing it to a hdd and then scanning the stored waveform for segments that repeat over and over (the adverts) and replacing them with filler music or just deleting them outright. I'm not bothered about the time delay this would result in; I can live with a half hour lag quite comfortably. I just want rid of the adverts! Has anyone any helpful suggestions to offer about how this scheme might be brought to fruition, or else other suggestions that would sort this annoying problem out?

Cheers, cd.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Can't really help with your question, but which internet radio station provides an alternative to R4 without the 'wimmins' issues' etc?

[Adrian]

Or, of course, just turn it off/over to R4Extra for that 45min/day...

[Artic]

Cursitor Doom scribbled...

Play your own music.

[Nick Odell]

I'm not the OP but Canada and Australia have national broadcasters with good quality programmes (at certain times); NPR in the USA etc.

I would have thought that since most stations carrying advertising are networked these days that the broadcast carries a digital signal to let the local station know when to inject the adverts - much in the way that a symbol used to appear on the screen before adverts on ITV. Perhaps there's a way to intercept that signal and instruct the receiver to respond accordingly - but I think it's probably a question best asked in an amateur radio or internet radio newsgroup.

Nick

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The beauty of R4 is it's a UK based channel. I'm listening to Gardener's Question Time at this minute - it wouldn't be much use if Australian. ;-)

[fred]

In article , Cursitor Doom writes

Would you object to a 24hr delay?

If you just recorded the day's radio then you could play it back the following day and jump through the ads using hotkeys as many software players will jump forward a set number of seconds per jump command.

You'll prob want to jump through the news too :-)

[PeterC]

The most annoying aspect is when a blaring ad. butts in to a classical piece, as the contrast is very marked. Don't the idiots realise that such tactics deter listening to the station? I've ditched a couple that do this, so I now don't hear the ads. at all - well done, marketing!

[Adrian]

In message , PeterC writes

I'm increasingly coming to the view that marketing departments exist to increase customer churn. I can't think of any other reason they act in the way they do.

Adrian

[tony sayer]

In article , Cursitor Doom scribeth thus

Nothing really. Remove the ads and the station stops .. its got to be paid for/funded somehow!....

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

BBC R3's podcasts sometimes do that with a "You're listening to a podcast of " - in either Building a Library or Composer of the Week - can't recall which, and I find it very annoying. It's not as if I didn't know what podcast I'd just picked to listen to.

I emailed a complaint but it's made no difference.

[Cursitor Doom]

I rather like the alternative stations in the US such as Coast to Coast AM and the GCN network; they're far more relevant to white, middle aged men than anything you ever get from the BBC.

[Cursitor Doom]

I'd prefer 2 hours max.

I don't want to have to hit a jump button every time an ad segment comes on; they're so frequent it would drive me mad! The idea I came up with automatically learns new adverts as they come out and cuts them with no instruction needed from the user. That's the beauty of it: any content that matches a 'fingerprint' that's already been stored at least once on the hdd is deleted before even the first second of it reaches one's earholes. I can't believe I'm the only one who's thought of this but there's nothing on ebay I can find so I'm guessing the ad companies have bought out the patents to such designs to prevent them being manufactured (for commercial purposes - if you'll pardon the pun - at least).

[Andrew Gabriel]

I listen to NPR sometimes when I'm in the States. It's a 10-20 year timeshift of Radio 4. Some of my US colleagues will say things like "Oh, we love /Just a Minute/ - Frank Muir and Kenneth Williams are fantastic." Then I explain that they died many years ago, which comes as a bit of a surprise.

[Uncle Peter]

Play your own music and don't use radio.

[Cursitor Doom]

True, but the BBC's constant propaganda is even worse; I can't stand listening to it any more. At least with adverts there is a way, in theory as I've outlined, to block them so I'd far rather deal with adverts than bullshit which can only be remedied by the OFF button.

[Brian Gaff]

Not really, I suggest that this is not going to work. Most of the time ads seem to be cross faded and at differing levels, and the life of a given advert is these days quite short and you would need to be always retraining the system. also of course some adverts are all chat, and could be seen as programs. Often radio stations on the web repeat the same content over and over as well so you could end up with silence. Can you not just train your brain to ignore them?

Brian

[John Williamson]

If you listen to music radio you may have a problem, as most music stations now seem to just play the same dozen or so songs over and over and over and.......

On exception would be Radio 3, but even Classic FM do it to a degree.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It's surprising how many don't seem to realise this.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Sounds like a good reason to avoid, then.