Hospital Radio Research with Claude
Let me be honest with you. I love doing hospital radio. I love the songs, the listeners, the whole warm, slightly chaotic world of it.
What I don’t love quite as much is the admin side; specifically trying to remember which songs I’ve played, how many times, and when.
It’s not glamorous, but it matters. Nobody wants to hear the same song three weeks running.
I keep track of everything in a Google Sheet, one for each programme, which sounds organised until you realise that staring at row after row of data is nobody’s idea of a good time. I knew the information was all there, song titles, shows, dates played, but getting at it quickly? That was another story entirely.
That’s where Claude came in.
Starting with the raw data
The first thing I did was export my Google Sheet as a ‘xlxs’ file and hand it over to Claude.
My instructions were simple: read the data and pull out the raw information I needed; how many times each song had been played, which show it belonged to, and the dates it was aired. No frills, just the facts.
I also asked it be aggressive with matching titles which might have been spelled slightly differently.
Claude delivered. Within moments, it had read through the entire file and made sense of what I’d given it.
It identified the songs, matched them to their shows, and tallied up the play counts. Honestly, it would have taken me the better part of an afternoon to do that by hand, and I’d have almost certainly made mistakes somewhere along the way.
That part alone was worth its weight in gold.
Building something I could actually use
The next step was where things got really interesting. I asked Claude to build me an interactive dashboard — something I could search through to find a song or a show and instantly see all the relevant details laid out in front of me.
What it produced was genuinely impressive. A clean, searchable interface where I could type in a song title and immediately see how many times it had been played, which show it came from, and every date it had aired. Same thing for shows; search for a musical and every track from it would appear, neatly organised and easy to read.
No spreadsheet scrolling. No squinting at tiny cells. Just the information I needed, right there.
The bit I didn’t ask for (but absolutely needed)
Here’s where I have to give credit where it’s due. I hadn’t asked Claude for anything extra. I’d given it my requirements and expected it to stick to them. But it quietly added something I hadn’t thought to request: a set of filters.
Not complicated ones, just practical. I could filter by date range to see what I’d played in a particular month. I could filter by show to get an overview of a specific musical. I could sort by play count to quickly spot which songs were getting a lot of airtime — and, more usefully, which ones I’d been neglecting.
It was the kind of thoughtful addition that makes you think, “Yes, of course — why didn’t I ask for that?” The answer, if I’m being honest, is that I simply hadn’t thought that far ahead. Claude had.
Keeping it fresh
A dashboard is only as good as the data inside it, of course.
A static snapshot of my playlist history would have been useful once and then gradually useless. So the next thing I tackled was making the whole thing updatable.
I asked Claude to add the ability to import a fresh export from Google Sheets directly into the dashboard, meaning that after each show I can drop in the latest file and the data updates automatically.
Play counts adjust, new dates appear, and everything stays current without me having to rebuild anything from scratch. It turned a useful tool into a genuinely reliable one, and it’s become a regular part of how I prepare for each programme.
What this means for my show
The practical upside is hard to overstate. Before a show, I can now check at a glance whether I’m relying too heavily on certain songs. I can make sure there’s variety in the setlist, that I’m giving different shows a fair share of airtime, and that listeners aren’t hearing the same tracks on repeat.
It’s also just a nicer experience. Preparing for a show used to involve opening a spreadsheet and hoping for the best. Now I open the dashboard, do a quick search, and I’ve got everything I need in about thirty seconds.
If you’re doing anything with data, even something as cheerful and low-stakes as a hospital radio playlist, it’s worth knowing that tools like Claude aren’t just for tech people or businesses.
They’re for anyone who has information they’d like to actually understand, without spending their whole afternoon wrestling with a spreadsheet.
For me, that’s been a genuine game-changer.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a radio show to prepare for.