We're delighted to introduce the newest version of Program Director. This update offers more control and insights for your Station Clock programming sequencing and scheduling, along with other enhancements to improve your experience.
The Station Clock is a tool for you to program and view all of your music and content sequencing information against time. The Clock illustrates when specific elements such as "Music Categories", "Liners", "Interstitials", and other spoken audio content will occur, allowing you to configure your broadcast schedule in the sequence you want.
Clocks are typically sequenced with an hour's worth of programming, but you can sequence any duration or amount of programming. To achieve an hour, the best practice is to slightly overschedule and mark some elements as "Optional". The clock logic will self-correct to fit the hour, preventing an accumulation of over/under time. If your programming is less than an hour, the Clock will loop to fill the hour.
At the bottom of the release notes, you will find a summary of the Clock programming layout, new features, and interface definitions.
---
Release Notes:
Programs
Tooltips have been incorporated throughout the entirety of the Programs section within the right hand side search panel. Anywhere lengthy text is truncated within a music track, or content within the search panel, now a Tooltip will display when hovering over the text, providing the full text.
Stations
Clocks now contain additional values within the Time column for ease in identifying elements more easily. The Element Position has been included to display the number of the element within the programming sequence. The Track Position has been added to indicate the sequence of tracks within the programming sequence.
We have incorporated a safe guard that ensures that a Default Clock is programmed before you can schedule your broadcast. This is in the form of a simple toast message that appears when attempting to Apply Changes. The message reminds you to configure your Default clock before proceeding. More on the Default Clock and it’s importance can be found in this handy link here.
Streams
An issue was uncovered and resolved wherein the Stream Details Page would not display the appropriate scheduled data for streams that had Central European Time selected as the timezone for the stream.
Content
We have introduced the ability to shift select multiple items within the Content section, making workflow much more efficient throughout the Content section.
Platform
Over the last Sprint we took the time to optimize page load time performance, and there should be a noticeable improvement to general page load and navigation throughout Program Director.
For those looking to take a deeper dive into the Clock interface and a detailed understanding of the new functionality, an overview of the Clocks section is provided here for you:
- Time*: The approximate start time an element within your Clock will be scheduled for playback.
- Element Position Number (NEW): The number of the element position with your Clock.
- Category Position Number (NEW): The number of the Category position with your Clock.
- Name: The name of the element. Example: a Category name: “Power”.
- Type: The descriptor of the element. Example: “Smart Folder”.
- Items: The number of audio files within each element.
- Average Duration: The average time of an audio file within an element position.
- Plays: The expected times a single audio file will be scheduled from an element position within a given hour. Example: “3.4x / Hour”
- Percentage: The percentage of Category programming against the total number of unique Categories programmed within a clock. Example: 25% (meaning, 25% of Category programming within the clock comes from this specific Category.)
- Repeats: The expected time for a Music track to repeat itself within Clock scheduling. Example: “19.4 hours”, the amount of time it would take to hear a repeat if this Clock played back to back over time.
- Approximate Duration*: The approximate time that the full Clock will take to playback once scheduled.
- This value is taken from the “Average Duration” of each element, and can end up being longer or shorter depending on audio elements selected that deviate from the average duration value.
- This value can be a range of time if certain elements in the Clock are “Marked as Optional”.
- The playback logic can drop elements “Marked as Optional” to satisfy a projected sixty minutes worth of Clock programming to come within a minute of top of the hour Clock programming.
- You can mark any element as “Optional” by right clicking on an element and selecting “Mark as Optional”.
*The “Time” and “Approximate Duration” values are noted as approximate, as there are certain considerations that contribute to the playback scheduling logic and output:
- The amount of, and continuity of Music tracks within each Category.
- The placement of Categories and Content elements within the Clock.
- The elements marked Optional within the clock.
- The underlying playback AI logic, taking into consideration many years of machine learning data and analysis derived from radio programming.
- Any Rules that have been configured on the Clock or Station.
- Subtraction of the cross fade transition time between elements.
