I really like to listen to BBC Radio programs. Unfortunately the BBC chooses to make their programs available in Real Audio format which I really dislike. Really, really, really dislike. It also means I can't put the programs on my MP3 player. Well, courtesy of Stuart we have a handy script for quickly and easily saving our favorite BBC Radio programs under Linux.

The only tricky part is extracting the proper RTSP URL. Thankfully Stuart provides us with an easy method to do this as well:

Obtaining the ram file is still pretty easy, in fact using the command line to get it is easier than copying the previous link. So on a Linux command prompt enter:

curl http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/genres/comedy/aod.shtml?radio4/nowshow | grep [.]ram

Where the link is a copy of the link to start playing the file. This should give one line on the console starting something like:

<a href="/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio4/nowshow.ram">
<img src="/radio/aod/images/ico_realplayer.gif" width="16" height="12" alt="" border="0" align="left" vspace="1" />Listen using stand-alone Real Player</a><br clear="left" />

Put this link to the .ram file into my script … [and] add the http://www.bbc.co.uk on the front, and this will create an mp3 or ogg file of the show.

I've mirrored Stuart's handy script, which he makes available under the GNU GPL, here just in case it should ever go missing. Use the attachment link at the bottom of this post to download it and rename to listenagain.sh.