SMILE! YOU'RE ON WEBCAM!

Here at Rocket FM, Lewes's independent community radio station, we have a policy of  'Kaizen', or 'continuous improvement', just like the Toyota car company.

It's hard to believe this will be our seventh season!  We're making some further upgrades to our broadcast platform this year, such as moving the transmitter out of the studio itself, so that nobody can pour coffee over it, but in terms of the audience's experience there will be two major changes.

First, we will have some webcams this time, accessible from this website, so perhaps radio will indeed have the best pictures!  There will be a webcam running in the studio throughout the broadcast, so that people can see what a good-looking bunch we are, and watch the live programmes being produced in real time.

We also plan to have a webcam overlooking the High Street at the war memorial, which will show some great pictures on November Fifth.  The refresh rate of the latest generation of webcams on a broadband connection is beginning to approach live television.  The cam should be up and running to show a view of central Lewes to the world well before the Fifth.  If all goes well, we will add further webcams in future years.

Secondly, we are starting by broadcasting on the Internet only from 13th October.  This is a logical step, in view of the good response to the previous years' web streaming, to the special interest Soundwave net-only broadcast last February, and in view of the general growth of on-line listening. This will enable us to broadcast for more days (with net-only broadcasting, we do not have to pay daily licencing fees to Ofcom) and to give more people a chance to broadcast.