Make Your Own NPR Station
Table of Contents
I mentioned using an iTunes script to insert NPR news updates into my daily listening. The Doug’s AppleScripts version hasn’t worked for me in a while — probably because it hasn’t been updated since 2007. I did a little tweaking, and now it works just fine. It doesn’t have a nice icon though, just an ugly generic script icon. But! -it works great, and I highly recommend it if you use a Mac and like to keep iTunes playing all day. [Edit: Link was broken and weird earlier, should be good now.]
Download: Play NPR Hourly News Script
What it does: When you click on “Play NPR Hourly News Summary” in your iTunes Scripts folder it will check and see if there’s a new five-minute NPR news summary available. It’ll then ask you if you want to listen to it now or not. If you have music playing at the time, it’ll wait until after your current track to play. From then on it’ll look for a new copy of the podcast every hour and play it after your currently playing track. Each podcast is about five minutes long, and this script is designed to chop off the unnecessary beginnings and endings so you just get the news.
How to install it: Unzip this file and drop it into [user name] > Library > iTunes > Scripts. If there isn’t a Scripts folder in iTunes, make one then drop the app in there. The next time you open iTunes you can run this script via the Script menu. It’ll be this icon.
You’ll also need to subscribe to the NPR Hourly News Podcast. You can do that via iTunes.
If you need more detailed instructions, you can use the original Read Me PDF on the Doug’s AppleScripts page.
