How can we broadcast news smoothly at top of the hour ?

[radiodungog]

Dmitry,

For just over 2 years we have broadcast the news at top of the hour - but always waited for the previous song to finish before playing the news.  Because songs come in variable lengths the worst case could be that the news is delayed by 3-4-5 minutes.

Recently I have received some listener feedback saying that "news at top of the hour" should go out on time - and any delay suggests that there is NO news.

Our news bulletin is automatically downloaded via FTP at hh:55 - or 5 minutes before the hour.  It is collected and stored as a file with a consistent filename.

When we first started broadcasting the news we chose to cut off the previous song and play the news exactly on the hour.  This sounded very unprofessional and sometimes the previous song only played for a few seconds before the news cut in.  It really sounded terrible.

I would be interested to hear from other RB users to see what other options are available to get around this problem.

Our station broadcasts in automated mode with RB for 75% of the week, and with a live presenter for 25% of the week.


Thanks,  Jamie C.

 

[pety]

We always start news like this:


14:00:00 - ID (Station ID "This is RVE. We broadcast on 89,4 FM" - or something like that);

14:00:07 - Time Announcement (every radio operator recorded his voice - so, this is an mp3 file made by us);

14:00:10 - NEWS

14:07:xx - Usual Program

This comes in a playlist wich starts as immediate event at 14:00.

Before playlist from 14:00 we have a playlist (13:00) wich ends with music (few tracks wich goes over 14:00) BUT with 2 sec before 14:00 the track will be fade out and playlist from 14:00 will start with ID, Time Announcement and News and so on. The ID's, Time Announcement etc., are special File Types with no fades.

See some of our playlists in attach

 

[pety]

It is better explain in image

 

[pety]

And some special File Types...

 

[djsoft]

When we first started broadcasting the news we chose to cut off the previous song and play the news exactly on the hour.  This sounded very unprofessional and sometimes the previous song only played for a few seconds before the news cut in.  It really sounded terrible.

Jamie, this problem exists and RB 5.0 will offer a solution for this. Something like this: it will check if there's an upcoming event and start a sweeper instead of a music track.

To avoid song being played for a couple of seconds before news, you can start a sweeper at xx:58:30. This way the current song will end and sweeper will play. Then sweeper will be terminated by news. It will make things slightly better.

pety
How did you solve this problem? Are you using hand-made playlists?

 

[pety]

What means hand-made playlist? My english is very poor

 

[djsoft]

I'd call playlists, generated by Playlist Generator Pro or similar software as automatic generated playlists. Playlists which you made yourself are hand-made

 

[pety]

Now I understand, thanks. Yes, 95% works with hand-made playlists as immediat events. Even ADS are in hand-made playlist. In this way we control at second all events. We record news in production, edit, mix with intro, outro and specific signals from news and mastering as final product. Finally we send the track in Live RadioBOSS PC and operator makes playlist. Sometimes we make news LIVE, but we have a hand-made  playlist wich start at sharp (let's say 14:00, 19:00 etc.) with ID, Time Announcement and a PAUSE called "News with Alex N." and a short track wich is played by operator as an intro betwen news. After that music and so on.

 

[pety]

By the way!
Even hand-made playlist are made with PGPro for the music, spots, meditations etc., etc. After that we add special tracks conform our Radio Station Scheduler and save it. For adds we made some playlists and add them in playlist with "Insert tracks from playlists...".

 

[radiodungog]

Dmitry, Pety,

The problem cannot be solved by adding a sweeper at xx:58:30 because we never know when the last song will finish - never ever !  Songs are always different lengths so there is NEVER any predictability.  We don't manually generate music playlists - we do that automatically with PGPro and assemble them according to a date and genre formula.  So at some stage in the last part of the hour we need to calculate the time remaining until top of the hour and find a song to slot in.

If we insert a station sweeper then it will never be the correct length.

If songs range in length from (mm:ss) 02:15 to 7:00 then it is possible that we end up with a gap equal to that time range before top of the hour.

Having a list of filler songs with different lengths is the only sensible thing I can think of.



Jamie C.

 

[djsoft]

Yes, a list of filler songs and sweepers is the best solution IMO. It will be implemented in RB 5.0.

Currently you can manually edit playlists generated by PGPro to have the desired duration...

 

[radiodungog]

Dmitry,

Good idea, a list of filler songs and different length sweepers is a good solution.  Great

Is RB 5.0 a long way off ?


Jamie C.

 

[djsoft]

Not very long - beta version will be published in October.

 

[pety]

Not very long - beta version will be published in October.

Don't forget about syncronisation time  . Milliards of Thanks !

 

[radiodungog]

Dmitry, Pety,

Another interesting solution that uses the same principle but different sound material is to make a collection of station promotions or local community promotions that run for different times.

Examples:  (mm:ss  name)

00:15  filler_01
00:30  filler_02
00:45  filler_03
01:00  filler_04
01:15  filler_05
01:30  filler_06
01:45  filler_07
02:00  filler_08
02:15  filler_09
02:30  filler_10
02:45  filler_11
03:00  filler_12
03:15  filler_13
03:30  filler_14
03:45  filler_15
04:00  filler_16

And with each filler use standard station background music with the promo announcement starting at the beginning and always leave the last 15 seconds with background music only.  Then use the upcoming news scheduled event to cut off the filler and run the news at exactly top of the hour.  That way the promo announcement will never be cut off - only the background music will be cut off.

Does this make sense ?

Hey Pety, what country are you in ?  I'm in Australia and when I looked at your screenshots I couldn't work out what language they were in.


Thanks,  Jamie C.

 

[pety]

Hallo Jamie. I like Australia a lot. I am from Romania. It is interesting your solution. In our radio station we make a mix playlist. That mean that in the first time use PGPro and after that we add manually in the proper time our productions. Every hour is made like this. In that way we control what in on air. We have two operators wich are paid to do that every day.

 

[djsoft]

Jamie, yes, nice idea. We'll see how it goes on practice when RB 5.0 beta is released.

 

[radiodungog]

Pety,

Could you send me a screenshot of your Scheduler entries so I can see the info clearly ?  It looks like you are doing some  clever stuff with the time macros and I'd be interested in seeing it.

Thanks,  Jamie C.

 

[pety]

Pety,

Could you send me a screenshot of your Scheduler entries so I can see the info clearly ?  It looks like you are doing some  clever stuff with the time macros and I'd be interested in seeing it.

Thanks,  Jamie C.

Sure, over about two or three hours becouse I'm in Live now. Thanks for understanding.

 

[pety]

I made three playlists and I show the settings for event scheduler. If you need anything else tell me.