Radio Classics Schedule

An accessible weekly schedule for SiriusXM Radio Classics (Channel 148) - the old-time radio station playing Golden Age programs like Suspense, Gunsmoke, The Six Shooter, and Lux Radio Theatre.

Live site: https://duvey03.github.io/radio-classics/

The official schedule is only published as a weekly Excel file, which is awkward to read on a phone. This project automatically scrapes that file, converts it to a clean JSON feed, and renders it as a fast, searchable, mobile-friendly web page that updates itself with no manual work.

Why I built this

My grandpa loves this channel, but he had no easy way to see what's on. He doesn't own a computer - just a cell phone - and isn't comfortable navigating the internet. So I built him a single, dead-simple page with large, readable text, saved it to his phone's home screen as an "app," and made it update itself so neither of us ever has to touch it. He taps one icon and instantly sees what's playing now and what's coming up.

That's also why the page leans hard on accessibility - big text, high contrast, semantic markup, and screen-reader support - so it stays usable for anyone who finds the schedule as hard to read as he did.

Add it to your phone (like an app)

You can save the page to your home screen so it opens with one tap, full-screen, just like a real app. There's nothing to install from an app store.

First, open the live site in your phone's browser: https://duvey03.github.io/radio-classics/

iPhone / iPad (Safari)

1. Tap the Share button (the square with an arrow pointing up) at the bottom of the screen.
2. Scroll down and tap Add to Home Screen.
3. Tap Add in the top-right corner.

An icon now appears on your home screen. Tap it any time to see the schedule.

Android (Chrome)

1. Tap the three-dot menu (three vertical dots) in the top-right corner.
2. Tap Add to Home screen (it may say Install app).
3. Tap Add, then confirm.

The icon appears on your home screen, and you can move it anywhere you like.

Tip: it works just like any other app afterward - no need to remember a web address.

Features

• Always current - a GitHub Action re-fetches the schedule on a cron and commits the updated data, so the site stays fresh on its own.
• "What's on now" and "Coming up" - highlights the current show based on Eastern Time, regardless of the visitor's timezone.
• Search - filter the whole week by show name.
• Accessible - semantic table markup, ARIA live regions, a skip link, keyboard support, and screen-reader-friendly labels.
• No build step, no framework - plain HTML/CSS/JS served straight from GitHub Pages.

How it works

gregbellmedia.com (weekly .xlsx)
        │
        ▼
scripts/fetch_schedule.py   ──►  docs/schedule.json
        │                              │
   GitHub Actions                      ▼
   (cron + commit)            docs/index.html + app.js + style.css
                                       │
                                       ▼
                              GitHub Pages (live site)

1. scripts/fetch_schedule.py downloads the source page, finds the Excel file for the current week (parsing the date range out of each filename), and downloads it.
2. It parses the spreadsheet dynamically - locating the header row by day names, the Eastern Time column, and the time blocks - then joins multi-line show descriptions, tags themed programming, estimates show durations, and writes docs/schedule.json. If anything fails, it writes a safe placeholder so the site never breaks.
3. .github/workflows/update-schedule.yml runs the script on a schedule, and commits docs/schedule.json only when it changes.
4. The static frontend in docs/ fetches that JSON and renders the table.

Project structure

.
├── docs/                       # The published site (GitHub Pages serves this folder)
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── app.js                  # Rendering, search, "what's on now" logic
│   ├── style.css
│   └── schedule.json           # Generated data (auto-committed by CI)
├── scripts/
│   └── fetch_schedule.py       # Scraper + Excel parser
├── .github/workflows/
│   └── update-schedule.yml     # Scheduled fetch-and-commit job
└── requirements.txt

Running the fetcher locally

Requires Python 3.12+.

python -m venv venv
venv/Scripts/python.exe -m pip install -r requirements.txt   # Windows
# or:  ./venv/bin/python -m pip install -r requirements.txt   # macOS/Linux

venv/Scripts/python.exe scripts/fetch_schedule.py

This regenerates docs/schedule.json. To preview the site, serve the docs/ folder:

python -m http.server -d docs 8000
# then open http://localhost:8000

Deployment

The site is hosted on GitHub Pages from the docs/ folder on the main branch. The schedule data refreshes automatically via the GitHub Action - no manual deploys needed.

Acknowledgements

Schedule data comes from gregbellmedia.com. This project is an unofficial, fan-made viewer and is not affiliated with SiriusXM or Radio Classics.

License

MIT