Working on fixing PFA Radio issues on certain podcast apps

[Dan Druff]

As you probably know by now, my computer is broken and is in the process of being repaired. At the moment I am on an alternate computer. I will try to round one up suitable to broadcast radio this weekend.

In any case, while I can't broadcast radio tonight, I will work on radio anyway, by attempting to fix a longstanding problem.

Not all podcasting apps are created equal, when it comes to grabbing content. Some are robust and quick, while others are unreliable and flaky. Here is what I've found regarding the apps/platforms carrying PFA Radio:

BEST
===
Spotify: Blazing fast, reliable, and even creates automatic links to the timestamps I list. Highly recommended, regardless of what the wokes think of them carrying Rogan.


PRETTY GOOD
=========
Bullhorn: Little known app, but it gets the show fairly fast, and you can either listen normally or via its own internal call-to-listen line!

TuneIn: Pretty fast at getting the shows, and reliable. Also carries the live broadcast & streaming reruns on a second PFA entry.


OKAY
====
iTunes: Doesn't get the episodes as fast as the ones listed above, but works fine.

Google Podcast: Same as iTunes regarding speed/reliability, basically.

Amazon Alexa: Gets the episodes at reasonable speed.


MARGINAL
=======
Audible: Gets episodes at reasonable speed, but their listening interface is shitty.


BAD
===
Stitcher: Very unreliable with picking up episodes. Seems to work for awhile, then stops, and I have to bitch at them to get them to pick up episodes again.

iHeart Media: Stopped picking up new shows after 9/11/2021 (fitting date). This wasn't intentional, but instead because their RSS reader is extremely finicky.


Note that I believe PFA is carried on more podcasting platforms than any other poker radio show or podcast.

Anyway, since a lot of people use iHeart Media (it's a huge service), I have been working with their tech team to get it working on PFA reliably. They keep pointing out things in the RSS feed (the file I have to use to instruct podcasting services to pick up episodes) which their system can't handle. The slightest deviation from "standard" will fuck them up, apparently. Notice that Spotify and the rest of them (other than Stitcher and iHeart) have no problem with my feed, so honestly those systems were just programmed by morons.

I'm not the one who developed the RSS podcasting feed here. It's part of vBulletin software (though I've made modifications to improve it). Unfortunately, this requires even more modifications to get working.

I will work more on those tonight, and I will let you guys know if iHeart Media and/or Stitcher ever get working reliably. In the meantime, use one of the others I mentioned above.

None of this affects the live broadcast, which comes directly from the PFA server itself.

[Dan Druff]

Okay... iHeart Radio now works again: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-p...adio-65526327/

Made a bunch of modifications to the RSS feed generation, much of it modernizing it to 2020s requirements. Looks like that made iHeart kick into gear and work again.

Stitcher is still fucked up.

[khalwat]

Validates now: https://validator.w3.org/feed/check....Fforumids%3D12

But you might want to switch the encoding to UTF-8

[Dan Druff]

Validates now: https://validator.w3.org/feed/check....Fforumids%3D12

But you might want to switch the encoding to UTF-8

Can't do it without breaking the forum and the RSS feed generator itself. This vBulletin version uses ISO-8859-1, and it's non-trivial to change that.

Fortunately it looks like I probably don't need UTF-8, since I've stripped all extended characters out of the feed, and that's the main reason podcasting apps want UTF-8 in the first place.

I fixed everything else that the validator bitched about, which indeed got iHeart to work again. Some of it also involved updating to recent podcasting standards, such as the categories which Apple changed in 2019.

I know you are big on upgrading to the latest and greatest version of things, whereas I like to stick with old-but-familiar versions until forced off. Different strokes...

[Dan Druff]

BUMP

Stitcher was still having issues, and I have been trying to get an answer out of them. I finally got a response out of their engineers, who told me that vBulletin is improperly generating the "ETag" header, making it the same value every time. This, in turn, makes them think nothing has changed when I release new shows.

I have removed the ETag header (which apparently is mostly redundant), so hopefully that fixes Sticher. And hopefully it doesn't break the other services. I will post an update when I see the results of this change.

[Dan Druff]

Stitcher grabbed the new episode quickly.

Looks like I have all the apps working. Until the standards change again, that is.