Is there a way for show times to display based on a user’s local time zone? Similar to how Google Calendar automatically adjusts times?
We’re a college radio station, and many of our listeners and DJs are studying abroad or based outside the U.S. Right now, all show times default to EST, which can be confusing.
I’m currently outside the country and in a different time zone, and I keep having to manually convert show times from EST. It would be really helpful if Spinitron could automatically show schedules in the viewer’s selected or detected time zone.
Every date and time in Spinitron is formatted in the station’s time zone regardless of the web browser’s location or configuration.
The reasons are several. First is simplicity.
But more interesting than that: because location and hence also time zone are part of a station’s identity. Almost all stations using Spinitron are focused on a geographically local community one way or another. DJs often express their location, date and time of day in their announcements. Many stations organize their programming according to time of day, e.g. pop in the morning drive, jazz in the evening. And we don’t want Spinitron to attempt to convert any of this. If you’re in Cape Town listening to a station in Fairbanks Alaska, I think you can and should make the effort to wrap your head around the difference in location and consequent time zone and relate to it as it really is. And I think Spinitron cannot successfully obviate that effort by formatting dates and times differently and would very likely add confusion by doing so.