RadioBOSS - Preparation of Shows in Advance

Hello Dmitry,

I'm looking for suggestions for how we can prepare our shows in advance - typically up to 4 - 5 weeks in advance.

Because we are a Community Radio Station we operate with volunteers and manual tasks (and RadioBOSS admin) tend to get done one day a week or perhaps one or two days a month.

We have about 12-15 on air presenters that do shows once every week - with each show typically running for 3 hours.  The rest of the time the station operates automatically with RadioBOSS playing pre-programmed music playlists with news and adverts and station IDs automatically inserted.

We are keen to get our current on air presenters to use "voice tracking" to make the station "sound live" for more of the time.  Shows would be prepared and stored for 4-5 weeks in advance and be put to air automatically on the correct day and time so that the volunteers can have time off and go on holidays and things like that.

What is the best way to do this ?



Thanks,  Jamie C.
 
radiodungog said:
What is the best way to do this ?
The easiest way would be to create a show, save it as a playlist, then schedule the playlist to play at desired time. Use the "Date" option in the scheduler to make sure it's started on the day you need.
 
Hello Dmitry,

Okay that's how the T-Model Ford was made in 1908.  We've progressed a long way since then.

With 7 shows a day and 7 days a week that is 49 lots of manual scheduling and that is very time consuming and boring.

Having to manually add those 49 scheduled events every week sounds like a terrible job to have to undertake.

What about building the schedule once by using the macro thing with the new weekday in the file names - that will give us 7 days of adaptive scheduling with about 6 scheduled time events to trigger the macro bits.  We get to do this once in our lives and the thing will keep going forever.  That is much more fun to do.

Then add to that some gadget like a Ferris Wheel (or shift register) to unload the passengers at the end of the ride and load the new passengers at the start of the ride.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferris_wheel



Hit me !    Jamie C.
 
radiodungog said:
What about building the schedule once by using the macro thing with the new weekday in the file names
Yes, why not.

Note that you can use macro in folder names too, this may be better to organize shows in folders, e.g.

C:\Shows\01\05-00.mp3

Where 01 is "Monday" (or "Sunday", depending on your regional settings).

Seven folders, for each week day, and in each folder playlists for this day, named based on time when they are supposed to start. Depending on what start times you need, it could be enough to have only one scheduled event to start all shows, something like C:\Shows\?wd\?hh-?mm.mp3 repeating, like, every 10 minutes.
 
Hello Dmitry,

Okay, we are talking the same language now.

RadioBOSS is a very smart and capable bit of software.  Most users do not use it to it's full capability - perhaps because they don't fully understand how each of the features work.

At Radio Dungog we don't use the ADS SCHEDULER for 2 reasons:

1.  We had to get ads running automatically 4-5 years ago and the ADS SCHEDULER had not been invented then so we had to create our own.  We did it like this:

a)  Created 12 playlist files (basically adverts 01 to adverts 12) and put them into scheduled events so they would go to air in a set sequence all day every day and forever.  Each of the 12 playlists contain 4 ads - so the total numbers of ads put to air from the station is 48.

b)  We added a shift register to offset the 12 playlists by 1 every day.  We did this with a DOS batch file which was initiated at midnight by a RadioBOSS event schedule entry.

c)  If an advert needs to be updated or changed we edit the playlist affected - and that is simple because there are only 12 playlists to look at.

d)  The schedule of putting each of the 12 advert playlists to air runs forever - no changes are ever required to that schedule.

2.  When the RadioBOSS ADS SCHEDULER came out and was upgraded to newer versions we understood that it required ads to be programmed and scheduled manually each week so we stuck with out existing system which is automatic and just keeps running forever.

Back to the smart macro system.

I have created 72 macro entries that cover a full day and they look like this:

1.  HH-00 is a scheduled event that calls 24 macros per day

2.  HH-15 is a scheduled event that calls 12 macros per day from 6am to 6pm

3.  HH-30 is a scheduled event that calls 24 macros per day

4.  HH-45 is a scheduled event that calls 12 macros per day from 6am to 6pm

5.  We only ever initiate the news or ads or a new show at one of the 4 time slots listed above.

a)  During the day from 6am to 6pm at HH-00, HH-15, HH-30 and HH-45

b)  During the night from 6pm to 6am at HH-00 and HH-30


The 72 macro playlists above contain fixed name playlists which in turn contain audio content OR tracklists. 

Changes are rarely made to the macro playlists.

Content is regularly changed in the sub playlists and tracklists - that's where we add and change all of our music shows.

Let me have a think about the folder idea and see how we can integrate that to make things easy and intuitive.

I'll get back to you in a few days.


Thanks,  Jamie C.
 
Hello Dmitry,

While I think about all of this can you please explain this statement:

Depending on what start times you need, it could be enough to have only one scheduled event to start all shows, something like C:\Shows\?wd\?hh-?mm.mp3 repeating, like, every 10 minutes.

I have created 4 scheduled events to cover HH-00, HH-15, HH-30 and HH-45.

I don't understand how you can have a single scheduled event to repeat every 10 minutes (or every 15 minutes).  How can you do that ?


Thanks,  Jamie C.
 
radiodungog said:
Most users do not use it to it's full capability - perhaps because they don't fully understand how each of the features work.
According to support requests we receive, there are plenty sophisticated configurations. Of course it takes some time to learn, but currently I don't see any solution to get rid of learning curve completely. Mostly, because tasks are different: some want fully automated station, others want live broadcasting during a day and automated at night. There are also shops, stores and casinos - they have their own tasks. Also there are lectures at churches, they have their own programming too. So there's no "one size fits all" way to use RadioBOSS :)

radiodungog said:
When the RadioBOSS ADS SCHEDULER came out and was upgraded to newer versions we understood that it required ads to be programmed and scheduled manually each week
This is actually not true - it only allows scheduling for seven days, but if you don't change anything, then it will repeat those seven days again and again.

radiodungog said:
I don't understand how you can have a single scheduled event to repeat every 10 minutes (or every 15 minutes).  How can you do that ?
That's easy: just enable the "Repeat every" option and set it to 15 minutes. Set the appropriate start time for the event - the only thing that matters here is minute. If you set to "00" then event will start at :00, :15, :30 and :45 minutes. If start minute set to :05, then the event will be started at :05, :20, :35, :50 minutes every hour.
 
Hello Dmitry,

"That's easy: just enable the "Repeat every" option and set it to 15 minutes."

Wow - I didn't realise that.  That is a very useful feature.  And with the playlist macros that can save us some scheduled event entries.


Thanks,  Jamie C.
 
radiodungog said:
RadioBOSS is a very smart and capable bit of software.  Most users do not use it to it's full capability - perhaps because they don't fully understand how each of the features work.

radiodungog said:
Hello Dmitry,

"That's easy: just enable the "Repeat every" option and set it to 15 minutes."

Wow - I didn't realise that.  That is a very useful feature.  And with the playlist macros that can save us some scheduled event entries.

That Ferris Wheel ride can be quite fast at times! ;)
 
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