I think Scheduled Chats are a great idea, but you need to make sure people aren't turned down from joining the chat on a time thats not scheduled so you can keep people chatting 24/7. Having scheduled chats everyday might be too much because not everyone will be coming in everyday, and it might be more productive to have one once a week or twice a week, in which people will know a lot of people will be going out of their way to showup, so you might get a larger audience that way.
You know my stance on the java/irc dave
Just this week I switched to a dedicated IRC server which you guys are welcome to use.
-No limit to the people in channel
-Your not required to use java, you could use one of the hundreds of irc clients out there, or you could stick with one of the various java clients I've setup for the server. (I could also, if wanted, program a mirc script specifically for SSF just as theonering.net has)
-We host the largest Tolkien Trivia bot on any IRC server.
-When ezboard goes down or you switch to a new forum system, the chat would stay up and stay the same.
-Ability for dave to assign channel operators to kick/ban/change topic/etc for the channel.
-Ability to change your nickname and set away messages as well as register/password protect your nickname.
-Bots always in the channel to auto-op people like dave as well as add a fun enviornment such as typing !cookies, the bot could say something like "Sauron hands chocolate chip cookies to everyone in the room".
-IRC is much faster and more efficient than the software that ezboard uses.
-Other Tolkien sites use the server as well, so just by typing /join #herenistarion you could join the NY Tolkien Society room and chat with them, others could also join SSF room, thus the channel activity would increase.
-If someone wanted to roleplay or chat with a specific group of people privately, thats not an option on this java chat, with IRC you could join another channel and tell your friends to join with you to chat, you could even password protect the channel to stop intruders, something which might be beneficial for a moderator meeting or something.
-If someone from Weta came to talk, you do just like they did on their chat (yes, they use IRC), set it so only people who are voiced can speak, so only dave could ask questions to the weta employee without everyone shouting.
-You could setup a bot to tell you when someone last logged on if you're looking for someone.
Alright I'm done with my rant.