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UFV, Ryerson Campus Radio Re-Tooling Websites Together

Fraser Valley/Toronto – CIVL-FM(UFV Campus Radio) announced a partnership with Ryerson’s CJRU 1280AM based in downtown Toronto that will see both stations redesign web and streaming services.

An RFP is available below that outlines the nature and scope of the project, as well as context relating specifically to the histories of both organizations. The deadline for proposals is July 10th. More details are available below.

“While campus and community radio in Canada has been involved in podcasting as pioneers through the decades,” according to CIVL station manager Aaron Levy, “the incredible growth of podcasts in the past decade requires that our stations develop resources towards new and emerging technologies in order to ensure our continued relevance in the future media landscape.

In particular, Ryerson’s student body has been one of the most historically impactful on the development of campus radio in Canada since the 70’s, and we are thrilled to be partnering with CJRU to move both of our engagement capacities into the 20’s together with this web development project.”

PROJECT DESCRIPTION 

CJRU and CIVL are looking to redesign and rebuild their websites. The new sites will include the content that is already on our current sites, but will also include features such as responsive capability, automatic playlist publishing, and automatically as well as manually when desired, podcasting every show broadcast on the station. 

ABOUT CJRU

CJRU is Ryerson’s campus and community radio station. We began as an online station in 2013 and started broadcasting on the AM dial in 2016. We are a non-profit organization and our programs and much of the writing and videos shared on our website is made by dedicated and talented volunteers. 

HISTORY 

Our current website was developed in 2013. As we’ve established ourselves as a station we see there being specific needs that we’d like to see addressed with a new web presence. 

ABOUT CIVL

CIVL is University of the Fraser Valley’s campus and community radio station. We began as an online station in 2008, and started broadcasting on FM in 2010. We are a non-profit organization built on the auspices of volunteer engagement and accessibility.

HISTORY 

Our current website was developed in 2007. As we’ve established ourselves as a station we see there being specific needs that we’d like to see addressed with a new web presence. 

PROJECT OVERVIEW 

TECHNOLOGIES – CJRU

What we are currently using:

  • Our current website is built on Newscoop 
  • The schedule is tied to our online programming schedule Airtime. 
  • The website and stream are hosted through Sourcefabric currently
  • We use Shopify for taking listener donations 
  • We use Mailchimp for our newsletters
  • We currently host audio on Soundcloud and publish podcasts through  Spreaker
  • Our hosts log what they’ve played on air through our logging software built on FileMakerPro. 
  • We use Airtable to manage our list of volunteers and sign out equipment

The new development should include the content currently available on our site. We are open to reorganizing this content but the ability to share interviews, videos, reviews, blog posts and charts is vital. 

TECHNOLOGIES – CIVL

What we are currently using:

  • Our current website is built on wordpress
  • The schedule is tied to our online programming schedule using a supercali platform 
  • The website and stream are hosted through our in-house FREEBSD based server
  • We use PayPal for taking listener donations 
  • We use both Mailchimp and Gsuite for our newsletters and want to streamline
  • We currently host audio on our website from our in-house database
  • Our podcasts are programmed to log 24 hours per day, but the start and stop times of each hour vary, and we wish to remedy this
  • We use excel and gdrive docs to manage our list of volunteers and sign out equipment
  • Our automated broadcast software is SAM Broadcast by Spacial Audio

The new development should include the content currently available on our site. We are open to reorganizing this content but the ability to share interviews, videos, reviews, blog posts, ongoing projects, initiatives and charts is vital. 

WHAT WE WANT TO DO – CJRU

We want to build a site that really takes into consideration the programming that we offer and puts it center stage. We expect that everything is built with web standards and is designed to work on all modern devices. A few functionalities that we are looking for: 

PODCASTING 

We currently publish a number of our spoken word programs using Spreaker. We also have spoken word archives on Soundcloud. With the new website, we want to make all shows streamable and downloadable and where appropriate, podcastable. Some considerations: 

  • We need some system for DJs to easily mark the beginning and end of their show so that the system builds out an MP3 file that wholly contains only the program the listener is requesting. 
  • If the programmer does not select a start or end time within some sort of buffer zone at these beginning and end points, the system should just revert to the program times. 
  • A quick fade should be applied to the beginning and end of each podcast to smooth out the ends. 
  •  Podcast audio build should have the option to tag on audio to the beginning and/or end of the show.
  • There needs to be an option to not have a particular episode become part of the podcast feed (ie: showfill). 
  • There needs to be an option to still manually upload audio for certain podcast feeds
  • The Program Director needs the ability to take down any episode. 
PROGRAM GUIDE 

The Program Guide is the backbone of the station on the air, and it’s deep integration into the new website build will be a key to the success of the new website. This integration would include things such as: 

  • Strong backend and visual frontend 
  • Ability to have shows that are not in the live schedule (ie: podcast-only shows). 
  • Robust recommendation engine to get listeners to explore new programs on the station.  
  • Ability for users to filter and sort programming by genre and other interests
OTHER FUNCTIONALITIES
  • Embedded audio player 
  • Easy backend interface
  • Improved mobile version 
  • All urls transferred over to cjru.ca

WHAT WE WANT TO DO – CIVL

We want to build a site that really takes into consideration the programming AND community engagement that we offer through both content and festival/event/awards sponsorship and puts it center stage. We expect that everything is built with web standards and is designed to work on all modern devices. A few functionalities that we are looking for: 

PODCASTING 

Though CIVL currently has different functionality than CJRU from a podcasting standpoint, in addition to the “other functionalities” listed below, CIVL wants a podcast system that achieves all the goals that CJRU has, but that also provides for hourly content to be archived and linked for access automatically without manual logging by programmers or staff.

CIVL sees the functionality of the CJSW.com website’s podcast platform as ideal because programs can be grouped according to genre or lists of genres, and then whittled down to create playlists of only the episodes users want to hear. It is searchable, mobile-compatible across platforms, and allows you to save your profile in order to return to the playlists of programs you’ve selected, which also update in a style similar to RSS. Ideally, programs could also be searched for specific songs, artists or albums played by being cross-referenced with digital logsheets and metadata.

Specifically from the original CJSW (University of Calgary) website build RFP: 

GENRE STREAMS

A number of listeners come to the station because they are a fan of a certain genre of music that we program. We would like to provide listeners with the option to click on a genre stream for jazz or metal and have the system build them out a never-ending stream of that genre’s programs from our podcast archives.

PERSONALIZED STREAM

While some folks come for a certain genre of music, many others come for certain personalities or they like many different genres of music. For these folks we would like to have a way on civl.ca where they can select the programs they love and the system will build them out a personalized stream of their favourite programs back-to-back. The system should also save the users data somehow so that they can jump right back into listening the next time they visit the site. We basically imagine this as a very easy entry way for people to get the podcast experience without having to know anything about podcasting.

PROGRAM GUIDE 

CIVL would like to achieve all of the functionality mentioned by CJRU, as well as ensuring that sponsorship imaging/messaging and host engagement can be integrated into individual program pages as well as the schedule at-large.

OTHER FUNCTIONALITIES
  • We would like to implement DJLand or another format of digital logsheets that can be manually edited by volunteers as they host content and connect these to our SAM Broadcaster logs in order to offer real-time online playlists to our website and metadata on song and station info to digital radio displays
  • CIVL wants to offer a portal/page on our website for a network to pages for local bands/venues/groups/etc (a dedicated section of the website for this)
  • CIVL hosts the annual Fraser Valley Music Awards since 2016. We would like a portal for this event on our website. A place where applications, judging and lists of sponsors, prizes, judges, nominees and award winners from current and previous years can be databased and easily accessible, as well as allowing for performers to apply through the website directly, and for people to sign up to judge or sponsor etc.
  • Events Calendar that can notify users that events they’re following are upcoming, and that people are able to submit their own events easily to 
  • Both stations need to be able to offer access to our historic podcast archives through our website, as well as being able to offer a high quality live and archive audio stream that has the capacity to be accessed by up to hundreds of users at a time

PROJECT BUDGET 

These stations have allocated up to $80,000 CAD in total to complete these two website redevelopment projects. 

PROJECT DEADLINE 

We would like the websites to be live for the end of September 2020.

PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS

Responses to this request for proposals are due by 11:59 PM PST on July 10th. Please send your proposals to rfp@civl.ca .

PROPOSAL INCLUDES

Proposals submitted should contain a minimum of the following items:

• process plan and timeline for how the project will be completed

• pricing schedule

• a list of key team members and sample work each of them have been principals on in the past

• client references

• your personal connection to radio

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