So I get that there has been a lot of discussion about HabboxLive and the various ills but I have some more targeted suggestions so I decided to make a new thread :)
First: Hire moreHabbo addictsactive Habbo Players
Obviously hiring policies are within the discretion of the manager but I think it would be valuable to hire more DJs who are on Habbo a lot and play the game for the game itself, as opposed to a lot of staff who tend to play in large part because they work for Habbox. It would also take a lot of effort because people who actively play Habbo on the whole tend to be a lot younger, and those people tend to be more difficult to put up with once you've kind of graduated past that level. A concerted attempt should be made to hire the younger (sometimes less refined, but more eager) Habbos. There also needs to be an internal community for them, even among staff years ago it really wasn't that cool to still be into Habbo, if there are a lot of people who are still active that changes.
Second: FOCUS ON THE NOOBS!
DJs should be cultivating fanboys and girls from the newer, more eager, and younger demographics of Habbos. There is often a debate on how much the Forum depends on Habbo, HabboxLive absolutely unequivocally depends on Habbo users to hit high numbers. DJs should be going to public rooms, and party rooms, and running good competitions. But more than anything DJs should be working on good one-to-one relationships. Say hi to the randos who come in and strike up a mild friendship, don't only focus on friends in the room, and maybe reach out to more people. If you reach a new Habbo then his friends will eventually come with him, and if you create a one-to-one relationship that really doesn't take that much maintenance, you now have a devoted fanbase, which a lot of the DJs used to. Maybe DJs still do this - I dunno, but if not it's something worth going back to.
Third: Slots
I'm not sure what the deal is with the lack of bookings. I do understand it's exam time, but even if half of the 51 DJs were away for exams, at 2 hours per week for a DJ that's here, and part-time DJs going for say 1 hour a week - even with exams you can surely spare a single hour for the week. With half away for the week and half here, you have 76 hours...that's 11 hours per day pre-booked if people are hitting their minimums. Yes, some people are fully away but there's probably less than half on exams. What's the point? The two-slot per week rule should be strictly enforced, absences of four weeks or greater should require resignation and reapplication (this used to be standard policy) and the number of staff should be capped again. I did this with the Help Desk, we scaled back staff to increase the exclusivity of the job and increase the burden of responsibility on each person, which made them feel like they were a greater part of the department. This is something I've encountered in real life with the organizations I run, sometimes a team of fewer people will get more done than a larger team because there's increased responsibility. So cut the number of staff to encourage people to do more than just the minimum, people can't be hired unless you have a slot available (maybe you still have that system, but the cap should be reduced) and enforce the slot rules strongly.
Fourth: Quality of Primetime Slots
Pretty simple, during designated "prime" times, speaking on air should be required, and every active DJ should be required to book at least one prime spot (or do a show in a non-prime slot, which I define as speaking fairly regularly, not just streaming). You wouldn't need to save the "prime" spots because people could still speak in off-prime, they would just have to make sure to speak in prime. The dilemma here is, what if the radio's going to go down, and all someone can do is stream? Once again, with 51 people you'd think during prime times you'll have at least one person. I see the potential issue here, but I think that if you say "oh if the Radio is going to go down you can stream" that exception will be taken advantage of.
Fifth: Permanent Shows
Those are always great, listeners know exactly when to tune in, there's a theme, there's a clear direction to the show, and there's an aura of established radio as opposed to helter-skelter cover and stream to keep the radio going. Permanent shows should be encouraged and if someone wants to do a perm show but doesn't have an idea, they should be helped to create one. It would be good to have 1-2 every day if possible.
Sixth: Music Variation
This is a common complaint and a fair one. I went through a variety of ideas here, I settled on one but I'll take you through the process anyway. Basically, the songs are just "chart" songs; the songs that are popular now that everyone hears every day. The idea is, the chart songs from 2005 are actually kind of refreshing, and pre-2000 is almost old school (over 12 years old!). At first I thought just compile a list of the top 10-15 songs from each of the past 25 years (maybe with listener input?) and post it in the Staff Forum and on the Site and suggest to DJs that they get some of that music and play it. The question there is how do you make sure they do it?
So here's my idea: take the 12 2-hour blocks of the day (0:00-2:00, 2:00-4:00, etc.) and every two weeks, you assign a different year to each of those blocks. The DJ within that slot has to play at least one song from that year. It encourages DJs to vary their song selection, it doesn't hamper them too much because it's only a year, they have all the music from that year to pick from. And because it's switched up every two weeks, after a while they have a variety of older songs to mix in with the current chart-toppers. My favorite thing is when I'm listening to HxL and I hear a new (or rather, new old song) and I decide to go get it. That's what I often listen to normal radio for: witty banter and finding new songs. I think that initially this should be enforced as a warnable offense. Obviously you won't catch everyone, but every now and then managers can go through song logs etc. to make sure, the idea is it needs to be enforceable to get people into the habit, and then maybe after a few months if someone forgets now and then you can wave it off.
Seven: Speaking Well, Presenting Well
Another thing that's often complained about is the quality of the DJs actually speaking on the shows. One criticism is often of the pitch of people's voices, which there's really nothing you can do about. But there are various things that can be done, make sure that typing isn't picked up, keep the mouth away from the microphone (these are basics, I know most DJs know this, but maybe make it clearer because I've heard a lot of this in the two days I've been listening again). But the biggest thing is this: I think that DJs should plan out what they say before they get on. There's often a lot of umming and ahhing and pausing as they click around to find something. They don't necessarily need to read out what they're doing, but between songs they should quickly outline on a piece of paper "Read this request out", check if they have the song "I'm going to say no because I just played Rihanna", "Tell joke about my cat", "Tell them to come to the party room", "Competition in 20 minutes", "Sign off with Random fact". This means that it's a smooth delivery and you know what information you will need, so that you don't need to look it up as you're on the air. I think that would improve DJ quality 500%.
Obviously certain DJs may be doing this already, but from what I've seen and what I've talked to people about (special thanks to Rich who I spent several hours talking to about this last night) it's not department wide policy (or isn't enforced) and I think these seven changes could bring leaps and strides to the radio. Feel free to tell me how woefully ignorant I am, how bad you think my ideas are, or how much you adore me. I won't be offended, except if you tell me you like Matthew better than you like me.
EDIT: A note, I know that this post largely comes off as know-it-all, sorry I am often bad with that when it comes to Habbox things, because I do know quite a bit about Habbox. First, I want to make it clear that I don't know all the facts here, a lot has changed since I was paying attention, and second I would be shocked if I was right on all seven of these - I definitely have some flaws in my thinking and the point of posting in feedback is to put my view out there, and refine, alter, or scrap portions of it based on what other people think and hopefully make meaningful suggestions for changes to fix the radio.
