99% ACCURACY Greg Diamond – ByrnesMedia Okay, I’ll admit to being a computer geek… I’m pretty sure I’ve written that before in an article or two. Anyway, the fact is I’m a fan of using technology as effectively as possible, and particularly music scheduling software. This month we’ll look at a few ways you can be more precise in your music scheduling, but we’ll also look at instances where maybe you rely too heavily on the computer and, in doing so, become less hands-on than you should be.
Nowadays, most stations use some type of digital automation to air their programming - MediaTouch, Scott Systems, AudioVault, and Master Control are just a few that come to mind. Most stations also use computer software to schedule their music – Selector and MusicMaster are the two most common. When used effectively, the automation system/music scheduler tandem offers tremendous opportunities for precision. All one needs to do it take advantage of them.
When I work with clients on music, I try to impress upon them the value of setting a “99% Accuracy Goal.” In essence, we work towards creating a system where almost everything that gets scheduled by the Music Department goes to air without alteration. The biggest hurdle to accomplishing this goal is not the various changes needed to facilitate it, but instead it’s the paradigm shift required by the personnel responsible to: a) get them to understand just how attainable this is; and b) see the benefits that will ensue from the short-term “grunt work” required.
A common objection comes from stations where a large portion of their day is voice-tracked. The truth is, though, it’s much easier to achieve accuracy in automated hours than it is for live shifts. In fact, if a station were voice-tracked 24/7 (I certainly hope not!), then 100% accuracy would not only be possible, but actually expected.
So, how do you achieve this?
Like they say, “timing is everything.”
The first step is to break down everything that goes over the air – music, imaging, commercials, and spoken work – and then start tackling each group separately.
Music is a logical place to start, given that it makes up the bulk of most stations’ programming. It’s quite common when I first look at a database/automation system to see numerous discrepancies between the two when it comes to song lengths. This brings us to the first piece of the so-called “grunt work.” The times of all of the songs in your database need to be changed to match those of your automation system. When doing so, however, it’s essential that they match the point where the next recorded item is started. This can be called the EOM mark, the AUX mark, etc. If your music software allows you to time to the 10th of a second (or even the 100th) then I suggest you do so - the more accurate the better. If not, then just round up or down to the nearest second.
Are you scheduling your imaging through your music database? If not, then that’s something you should really look at doing. Having your imaging on a few rotating “numbers” is fine, but why not allow these audio pieces to schedule like your music, complete with the same rules you apply to your songs to ensure they bounce well from daypart to daypart, don’t air in the same hour day after day, have a minimum time allotted between plays, etc. By entering your imaging like you would a song and giving each one a separate ID, you can also time them to the EOM as you would with your music. This is yet another step (and an important one, at that) in introducing greater precision in your scheduling capabilities. By the way, if you’re allowing your jocks to choose their own imaging, then I assume you are fine with the knowledge that a certain percentage of your ID’s will never be heard. I strongly urge you to stop that practise… immediately.
A spin-off benefit of scheduling imaging as described above is that you also gain a greatly enhanced ability to keep track of each and every ID separately. Why wait until you are sick of hearing the same splitter over and over when your software can be set up to automatically kill it on a given date (or after a pre-determined number of plays). At the very least, you can have the software alert you on a “stale-date” and then give you the option to replace it or continue with it.
One of the biggest challenges when trying to properly time out an hour is the amount of spots being run on a given day. Are you merging the commercial inventory with your music? If so, is it being done through your automation software or directly in your music database? I recommend the latter – your music scheduling program will almost certainly allow you to do so. When the traffic has been generated, pull it into the music log that you’ve already edited and then perform a final “clean-up” edit to get each hour to time out to 60 minutes +/- approximately 30 seconds. After that, it’s just a simple matter of keeping a running total from hour to hour to ensure you don’t get too far over or under the overall timing for the day.
It should be noted that importing spots into your music can be an exercise in frustration to set up, but the support personnel for your automation and music software are normally quite helpful in this area.
Spoken work can be the trickiest piece of the puzzle, but even here you should be able to create a system that works much more often than not.
In hours where the jock is live, you will need to add notes to your clocks to account for break lengths. Personally, I’m not at all a fan of dictating how long or short a break should be. If the person is relevant in their content and they avoid redundancies, then a bit should be “as long as it is”… period. Nevertheless, you can still add fairly accurate talk times to your clocks by simply timing a certain jock’s breaks over a few days and then average them out. No, it’s not perfect, but the goal here is to be close most of the time. For Morning Shows that are very content-driven, and where music is played very sparingly, any aspirations of accuracy have already been trumped by the desire for compelling jock-talk.
In voice-tracked hours, you are once again dealing with recorded audio pieces. As such, there lies the opportunity to time such elements as you would the music, imaging, and spots. With no variables in such situations (outside of technical issues), there really is no reason you can’t have an automated time block start and end exactly when you need it to.
The whole scenario may sound like a lot of work and in the short term that’s true, but this process need only be done once. After that, it’s just a matter of making sure all new cuts get timed and entered into the database in the same manner.
By being so precise, you should be able to schedule a day and be confident that the records and what takes place between them make sense and air as planned. In short, the momentum and flow of the station should be coming from the Programming/Music Departments and not from the person in the Control Room. I’m not being unduly critical of announcers; it’s simply not their job.
As mentioned above, there are instances where technology can be overused. One of my favourite examples is time-syncs in automated hours. These are designed as safety nets to make sure the station keeps running even if a piece of audio goes missing or is corrupted. If used as such, then they are valid and prudent additions to your clocks. Too often, though, they become a crutch for people who don’t take the care to properly time out their hours to begin with. Nothing sounds worse than a bunch of “extra songs” (usually the dregs of the music universe) running at the end of the hour, with one of them finally fading out in the middle when the automation system loads and fires the next hour. This is just bad programming and should be avoided.
Automatic reconciliation is another part of music scheduling packages that I find makes things too convenient, and in doing so can blind us to opportunities for improvement. Instead of auto-reconciling, try turning that feature off for a week and hand-reconcile. It’s quite likely you will see things that you never imagined were happening on your station. It also gives you valuable information when it comes to specific hours where songs are consistently being added or dropped. Maybe you need to adjust the timing of the live breaks in your clocks… or maybe you just need some “quality time” with that announcer. Either way, knowing what did and didn’t get played is an important step as you gradually fine-tune your system and move closer to the “99% Accuracy Goal”… a figure that stations have actually managed to achieve.
At ByrnesMedia we have worked extensively with clients to adjust their systems and allow for greater control over their on-air product. Should you wish to discuss these processes further, please don’t hesitate to call us at 1-866-332-1331. |