How to Produce a Show for Public Radio

Recently I wrote a post about how to engineer a show for public radio, and thus make your show more "friendly" to pubradio stations, and thus make it more likely that your show gets carriage by said stations.

Here I'll write a bit about what I know for producing a show for public radio, with an eye towards the same goal: getting more carriage on more stations. I admit, I don't know nearly as much about producing as I do engineering/tech stuff. But these days, there's a lot of overlap between two, so I'm not a total noob. :-)

1. The Catch-22 of Program Directors. PD's look at two main things when deciding whether or not to add your show to their lineup: how long have you been on the air, and how many stations are you on? In other words, if you're a new show with few (or no) affiliates, nobody wants to risk their precious airtime on your show. This means you need to do your homework and find smaller stations in smaller markets...especially LPFM stations...and approach them about carrying your show. Don't use the hard sell; expect that it will take several gentle hints and reminders. E-mail is your friend. Set up a simple and clean website with several recent episodes of your show (preferably in the same format that you would ultimately be distributing to them if they pick you up) so the PD can check out your show on their time, not yours. Also, thanks to the magic of podcasting, you don't need a radio station to get listeners to your show. If you can demonstrate that you've got hundreds (preferably thousands or tens of thousands) of regular listeners to your podcast, then that will go a long way to demonstrating to a PD that you're both around for the long haul and a good show that will get his station listeners.
2. Remember that there are only two kinds of shows: shows produced for ONE station, and shows produced for THOUSANDS of stations. By which I mean that if you're producing a show for just one station, and then another, different, station wants to carry your show...you must then produce the show as if hundreds of other, different, stations were going to carry it. There's not really a "gradual" progression here. What does this mean, exactly? Kinda hard to say, it's just a different way of thinking. For example, if your show relies heavily on local issues to provide something to talk about...you'll have to re-think that if you get an affiliate from outside your local area. Maybe you'll have to start tackling national issues and not talking about the local issues. Or you'll have to find the national angle about a local issue. You also have to almost completely get rid of any references that are specific to your "home station" since they won't apply to your affiliate stations. I say "almost" because many national shows will sometimes say "From WXYZ in Anytown, this is My Amazing Schmo - I'm Joe Schmo. Today we're talking about..." and that's pretty much it. No promos for other shows, no promos for the station website, no local PSA's, etc etc etc.
   
3. Your first station may air your show on Saturdays at 8pm. Your next station might not. Now what? This is not difficult, but it's something you have to accommodate: different affiliates will likely air your show at different times. This means you can't, for example, give specific times or weather updates during your show. But you can say clever things like "it's 22 minutes past the hour" which will be true for your affiliate regardless of what "the hour" is. You also have to watch out for dated references...if you record on Friday, and you talk about an upcoming concert on Saturday, what happens to the affiliate that airs your show on Monday? That's right...it sounds really bad to have dated references. Manage what you say appropriately.
4. Make it easy to identify your show to stations and listeners. A regular theme music to start off the show is a very good idea. Precious few shows can get away with This American Life's no format style...and they've turned it into a style of its own; even though every TAL episode starts differently, they almost all have a very distinct sound and style that makes them easy to identify. By the same token, you want to have something distinct/unique to each episode very early in the show...within the first thirty seconds...so that stations know they've got the right episode playing. For daily programs, especially newscasts, I like Free Speech Radio News's approach of saying what day and date the newscast is for right in the first 15 seconds of the broadcast. For weekly programs, make sure that week's topic(s) are identified quickly so a station can refer to your calendar/rundown easily. Don't make the filename of an audio file the unique method of identifying the episode except as mentioned in point 14 of "How to Engineer a Show for Public Radio"
   
5. Have good transitions in and out of your breaks. It's surprising how many shows do this badly. A good break starts about 30 seconds before the actual cutaway. It has a gentle transition out of whatever the actual conversation is, and then it has a bit of a forward promo to tease the listener with what's coming up after the break (give them an incentive to stick around!) and usually an action item of some kind...for more info about tonight's topic, go to our website www.myamazingshow.com or something like that...and then a clean end with 0.5 to 1.0 seconds of silence for the cutaway. After the break, same thing, say what the show is, who you are, who your guest is, what today's topic is, and any action item for listeners to get involved (adjust as needed for live or delayed shows).
6. Similarly, have a good wrap-up at the end. It's PATHETIC how many shows do this badly. Way too many programs don't leave enough time at the end for everything they subsequently try and shove in there. Democracy Now! is, sadly, a prime offender here...Amy Goodman is notorious for waiting until there's only 10 seconds left before the end of the show, and then she abruptly cuts off the speaker and speaks at the speed of light to shove in a bunch of "our show is produced by" credits and, inexplicably, a list of all the places she'll be visiting this week. It sounds awful and is, usually, impossible to understand...and most unforgivably, it usually runs several seconds over time, leading automation systems to cut it off in the middle (which also sounds awful). On the other extreme is a show like The Infinite Mind or Marketplace which typically have well over a minute (sometimes two or three minutes) of credits and underwriting at the end. Jeez Louise, enough already! Leave some time for the meat of the show! Okay, admittedly Marketplace is quite adroit at mixing in real content and a tease for tomorrow's show amidst all that fluff, but they're one of the few. Here's the deal, your entire wrap up should be between 30-60 seconds, depending on how much time you need to gracefully get a guest to stop talking. Here's a hint - don't ever say "We've only got 10 seconds left, but you get the last word!" No guest ever knows how to sum anything up in 10 seconds, and it almost always sounds lame or ends up with the host cutting off the guest mid-sentence. So figure about 10-20 seconds to get the guest to pipe down, and another 10-20 seconds (balance against the pipe-down part) for goodbyes to the guests. Keep your employee credits short...if you can't do it in 10 seconds then don't do it at all...and leave about 3 to 5 seconds at the very few for your theme music to play in the clear and then end/fade out to silence. The remainder of the time is for you to forward promo tomorrow's/next week's show topic. What about underwriting? Well, if you can pull off Marketplace's clever approach, then by all means go for it...but otherwise I recommend you actually end your show 10-30 seconds early and then put in 10-30 seconds of your underwriting to fill out the remainder of the clock. Most NPR shows follow this model, with Frank Tavares doing all the national funder spots.
   

How to Engineer a Show for Public Radio

I was thinking about this on my commute home today. It feels like an awful lot of public radio shows aren't really engineered all that well. And in some cases I mean the big, long-running shows, too...not just the little/new ones. Being someone who's been Technical Director and who now runs a radio station, I thought I'd pass on a few nuggets of truth. These are things that I personally look for in a pubradio show when it comes to technical compliance. They may not be true for every station, but I think you'll find that most stations will appreciate this.

Ed.note: When I originally wrote this, it was a semi-rant after a long weekend of screw-ups with my automation system, mostly due to producer errors. So the tone is a tad snarky, even if the information is 100% valid. Y'all have been warned...

1. Remember that most stations will be automating the playback of your show. Ergo, you must make your show friendly to automation software...and not make your show in such a way that it requires human intervention to broadcast.
2. Public radio lives and dies by the clock. Everything is done by coordinated breaks at specific times. If you're not on the clock...and I mean to the exact second...then you've broken format. "Broken" is a good word here because it'll sound like crap as a station's automation cuts off your show because the timing is wrong.
   
3. There is no excuse for not having a fixed length. Hourlong shows should end at 58:00, 58:30 or 59:00. Half-hour shows should end at 27:30, 28:00, 28:30 or 29:00. Pick a length and stick with it! It must remain the exact same length for EVERY episode. If your show isn't be fed live, then you have absolutely no excuse. There's this thing called "Protools" and it's been around a while. It makes editing to time really easy. And it also has time-compression/expansion while is audibly transparent and perfect for getting that last 20 or 30 seconds in/out of your mix. If you are doing your show live, learn to backtime a music bed to fade in under your host's intro/outro. It's not that hard.
4. Understand the difference between a audio file's time-length and the program audio time-length. When coming in/out of a break, remember to leave at least a full one second (preferably 1.5 to 2) of absolute silence, centered on the cutaway time. That lets stations "cut away" cleanly without cutting off your program material. This concept is what is meant by a show's "time" being 29:59 (29 minutes, 59 seconds). However, in today's age of ContentDepot and automation, even though there might be 29:59 of program audio (plus the one second of silence) the actual audio file (MP3, MP2, WAV, etc) must time out to exactly 30:00.000 - again, with Protools (or any audio editing software) it's very easy to do. And if you don't, it will screw everything up for the station. If you have four segments and you leave each audio file one second short, that means four seconds of dead air at the end. That sounds bad. Stations don't like it.
   
5. Stations have to pay the bills, that means they need breaks in your show to play underwriting. If you're an hourlong show, at least one sixty second break in the middle is required. Two 60's or two 30's (or some combination) is preferred. Halfhour shows need one 30 or 60 second break...two is nice, but not required. Remember, ALL stations need that last 60 seconds at the end for legal ID's, so that cannot be used for your overall alloted time for breaks.
6. Floating breaks suck. Everybody hates "floating" breaks. I don't care how much it "comprises your artistic vision" to have a break right in the middle of something. Deal with it and make your frickin' breaks the exact same time every week. One exception: half-hour shows I don't care as much because odds are good I'm not going to take the break anyways; I'll just let it play through. Actually, one other exception: if you're good about using segments (see point 9 below) then floating breaks aren't as big a hassle. But I still dislike them on general principle.
   
7. Follow the NPR clock for break times. For an hourlong show, the standard NPR break times are 60 seconds starting at 19:00.0 past the hour, and 90 seconds starting at 38:30.0 past the hour. That's assuming no cutaways for newscasts at the top and bottom of the hour. For a half-hour show, there isn't really a standard, but the break should fall around 15 minutes past the hour. If you want to really time it perfectly, call your local NPR station and ask them to give you a copy of the show "clock" of a show you like. Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! and Only a Game are good "example clocks" for non-hard-news shows. Weekend Edition and All Things Considered are good for hard-news shows. OnPoint and Talk of the Nation are good for call-in talk shows.
   
8. You don't have to have a cutaway for the TOH newscast, but it's not a bad idea to do it...especially if you're an hourlong show. Some stations will refuse to air a show that doesn't have a cutaway at 01:00.0 and 06:00.0 for the Top-Of-Hour NPR newscast. I'm not one of those stations; but I do prefer to have the option. Still, I admit it's hard to justify it because you know that any content you put between 01:00 and 06:00 might never get aired...so many shows put something of a "throwaway" segment in there (World Cafe plays one music track unrelated to the day's topic, TechNation has the "Five Minutes with Moira Gunn" commentary) but just playing music for five minutes (Living on Earth) can really screw a station that doesn't air NPR newscasts. Having a cutaway for the bottom-of-the-hour newscast is largely unnecessary unless you're a major daily news show meant to air during morning or afternoon drive. Halfhour shows don't need a newscast cutaway so much since it would leave very little time for the rest of your show.
   
9. I mentioned making it "automation friendly" - that means multiple audio files for multiple segments. ContentDepot works this way these days; each segment of the show is a separate MP2 audio file. That way a station can easily program which segments to air and which to ignore (and insert their own local segment for a break). For example, a show like Only a Game has eight audio files: billboard (01:00), newscast (06:00), newscast return music (00:30), Segment A (11:30), Break 1 (01:00), Segment B (19:30), Break 2 (01:30), Segment C (19:00). Add up those times, and you'll notice they total 59 minutes and zero seconds; a perfect hourlong show. What if you are not distributing through ContentDepot, and instead are using, for example, a podcast distributor like Liberated Syndication to distribute your show to stations? In that case, create an "extra" segment that is the assembled show as one audio file. That way stations that want the segments can take 'em, and those that don't care have an assembled show ready and waiting for them.
10. Automation is all about "the same"...as in, have your show distributed and ready to air at the same day/time every week. Pick a day and time and stick with it. You can't ever be late, or you'll screw over your affiliates. Have an "evergreen" show (something vaguely generic without any specific, dated, references) ready to distribute if your planned show isn't going to be ready in time.
11. Watch your audio levels. This shouldn't have to be on the list at all, but lately there's been too many shows that are produced in someone's basement on a Mac laptop running a portable Protools Mbox and mixed on headphones. This isn't entirely a bad thing; lowering the barrier to entry has resulted in many talented people getting access to the airwaves. Unfortunately, it's also led to a tremendous erosion of quality production values in many shows. One of the biggest transgressions is inconsistent audio levels; where the guest speaks really, really, quietly and then suddenly the host is REALLY, REALLY, LOUD!!! The rub is that there is no "level meter" that really works for loudness. The only way to really make sure your levels are right are to use your ears...and you cannot use headphones for that. Headphones inherently screw up the concept of ambient listening. Plus remember that while dynamic range is great in theory, in reality most FM radios can't handle very much difference between peaks and valleys...and when listening in the car (the place the vast majority of radio listening is done) anything in the valleys is lost in the ambient noise floor. If you lack the audio mastering skill and/or proper studio & speakers to deal with this...then I recommend the "brute force" fix: The Levelator processor. It's a RMS Normalization tool, and actually works pretty decently for people talking. It produces weird results for music, though...and really it's no substitution for a proper studio and proper mixing. Please note, I never advocate dynamic range compression unless you really know what you're doing. Compression gets wonky because every radio station in the country has its own compression scheme going on at their transmitter. And compressing an already-compressed audio source leads to unpredictable sound...remember, using RMS Normalization is "bad" enough - don't make it worse by using compression. The best solution is to use your ears while recording and mixing and make the loudness sound consistent that way.
12. Can't spare the bandwidth to send out an uncompressed WAV file to stations? Use MPEG Layer II (aka "MP2") instead of MPEG Layer III (aka "MP3"). MP2 is older and both less efficient at data savings and less flexible than MP3. So why use it? Two reasons: first, it's the standard that the public radio satellite system has standardized on for ContentDepot. Second, it's algorithm is superior to MP3 at surviving cascading algorithms (i.e. later re-compression of the data) which is a real concern with HD Radio which compresses everything down to a max of 96kbps using HDC (a variant of sorts on the AAC codec). There are many free tools out there for encoding into an MP2. I like the PRX encoder, even though it's slower than many of the others, because of its ridiculously-easy user interface and rock-solid results. If you don't use the PRX encoder, remember to turn frame padding off, and set it for 256kbps/stereo or 128kbps/mono and 44.1kHz sampling rate with 16 bits.
13. Speaking of PRX.org, it's a good reasonably-priced way to distribute your show if you want public radio stations to be able to find it. ContentDepot is even better but admittedly more expensive. If you're really broke, though, a cheapo podcast from LibSyn or someone else is better than nothing.
14. Speaking of filenames, name your segments the exact same filenames every week. The whole point is to drive stations to use the newest episode, not hoard old shows forever and ever. Keeping the filename the same makes it much easier for a station to set up automation; they just tell it to play an audio file named "whatever.mp2" from a given folder (that the podcast aggregator will dump your podcasted audio files into each week) at a specific time.
15. Too confusing to have everything with the same filename? If you must delineate the files somehow, put the date you're distributing the show as part of the filename and be VERY VERY consistent in how you do it. For example, let's say you distribute this week's show on May 31st, and you have three segments: first half, break, second half. Your filenames should be: 20080531-yourshow-1sthalf.mp2, 20080531-yourshow-break.mp2, and 20080531-yourshow-2ndhalf.mp2. Important point: the "-yourshow-1sthalf.mp2" part never changes. Only the date part (and I recommend the YYYYMMDD format, it makes sorting easy). That way a station can set up an automatic renaming tool to strip out the date part and copy the new audio file to the appropriate folder for the automation to play it. It is crucial though, that you never change the non-date part of the filename. It must always be the EXACT SAME CHARACTERS (and upper/lower case, too). In that same example, if one week the first segment was "20080524-yourshow-1sthalf.mp2" and the next week was "20080531-yourshow-firsthalf.mp2"? That won't work. Remember, the point is that no human at the affiliate station needs to even look at your show...it just all does it automatically. The only way that works is if you provide their computers with exactly what they expect to see. Otherwise it's "GIGO".
    

Following these settings is no guarantee that a station will pick up and air your show. However, not following these settings might give cause for a station to not air your show. I also recommend reviewing the guidelines at PRSS. They are specifically in regards to ContentDepot, but there's lots of good general info in there as well, be persistent in digging it up.

http://www.prss.org/training/online/moving_sound/creating.cfm
http://www.prss.org/training/online/moving_sound/file_formats.cfm

I also recommend Transom.org, too:
http://www.transom.org/tools/beginnings/
http://www.transom.org/tools/editing_mixing/

The role of the Music Director

In all my college radio advising, music is one area I generally don't meddle too much with. I'm so far out of touch with "today's music" that it's almost shameful. So I write this in an attempt to self-teach via organizing my thoughts, and hopefully I'll garnish some insightful comments, too.

First of all, I'll touch on formatted vs. unformatted. Most "college radio" stations aren't formatted, although I suppose it's worth pointing out that those few that are generally enjoy more listeners (and thus more quantitative success) than those that don't. It's not an easy comparison, though. One thing that really comes at me here is WERS's recent decision to dump block programming for freeform during most of the day. Before you scream "WERS is NOT freeform!!!" I recognize that by the classic definition, you are correct. However, Joe Public scanning the dial and finding 88.9FM isn't going to make that distinction. If Joe hears six different songs from six different genres, he's thinking he's listening to a freeform station.

Putting WERS aside and thinking more about the legions of "college radio" stations that are effectively "freeform" out there....you'd think that because of freeform's inherent all-inclusiveness that it'd be popular, but in fact the reverse is true: when the listening public writ large tunes into a station, they want to have a decent idea of what they're going to hear. Most people don't want to tune for rock-alternative and get polka. So the audience for freeform is always hyper-niche; only a very narrow audience really digs that uber-randomness.

Quick aside: the "Jack" format that sounds much like an iPod on shuffle is nowhere near as "diverse" as a real freeform station. Despite the branding, most "Jack" (or "Mike", or "Frank", etc) stations only draw from perhaps four or five genres during any given daypart...and those genres are usually somewhat related.

Getting back to freeform, and its close cousin block-formatting, that wildness to the playlist typically means you end up with listeners devoted to a specific DJ, because that DJ will be relatively consistent during their show. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but it can be very limiting for your listeners since they're - by and large - only tuning in once a week for a few hours as that DJ spins.

In theory you can group similar DJ's together so that you get something approaching a daypart going...hopefully convincing listeners to stick around for the next DJ after their favorite one leaves. But that must be fiendishly difficult to manage, both from DJ to DJ and also semester to semester as schedules change and students come and go.

I wonder if anyone's successfully pulled off a hyper-organizing of their DJ's that way. With modern technology and voicetracking it certainly can be done far easier now than in years past...although many DJ's prefer to run a live show to get the feedback from the listeners (and because they're, in many cases, too lazy to plan out their show in advance enough to voicetrack it) so I can imagine a philosophical war over trying to implement that. Anyone know of a successful or unsuccessful example?

So that's formatted vs. unformatted. I'll also get into how the traditional model of working labels for new music, and organizing that music for airplay, seems to be breaking down in the age of iPods and home-burned CD's...but that's for the next post.

Staying On-Air When No One's There - part 2

There's been some discussion lately on the listservs about automation systems, so I'm going to do something of a series paraphrasing those discussions. The first entry talked about Winamp Radio Scheduler, one of the better freeware solutions.

Next up on the list is 11software's JockeyPro solution. JockeyPro is not quite freeware, but it's very low cost: the software is $600, and a turnkey (complete hardware solution) runs from $1000 to $1300. You can also purchase a "light" version of JockeyPro called (appropriately enough) JockeyPro LT for $99. Separately, you can buy the VoiceTracker LT plugin for $50.

That's unique in my experience...I don't know any other automation system that has voicetracking capability for about $150. The price alone makes this an attractive option for many smaller operations.

Unfortunately, JockeyPro has some definite limitations. It can't handle very many file formats - WAV, MP3 and MP2 are pretty much it. Worse, there's a lot of reports that MP3's ripped with certain algorithms...notably the free (and common) LAME algorithm...will crash JockeyPro. Supposedly the Fraunhofer MP3 algorithm is safe, though...but of course you'll have to pay for that encoding algorithm and you'll have to screen your incoming MP3's very carefully.

The VoiceTracker LT plugin is also very limited; doesn't allow preview of the stuff in the playlist (which can make recording your voicetracking a little tricky) and apparently you can only record the actual voicetracks as 56k mono MP3 files...which is marginally sufficient but I'd prefer better audio quality (to survive cascading algorithms later in the airchain, like HD Radio). But it does have the advantages of a simple user interface, and it works.

One "bug" that's also a "feature" is how much work it takes to load each track into the JockeyPro libraries. You have to assign a genre and set incue/outcue points for each track. That can take a looooong time to set up if you've got a big music library. But at the same time, you really should be doing that work anyways. It's essential to making your automation sound good enough to mimic a live operator (a reasonable standard to set).

Now I mentioned this can be a $150 solution (not including hardware costs). So when it comes to support, you're getting what you pay for. That is, you don't get support. 11software is essentially a one-man operation (that happens to have two or three guys working there) and they don't have the greatest track record for support. I've heard several disappointing stories, and a few months ago I tried to download a trial version only to find their website was down. Understandable, except the site was down for several weeks. That's not so understandable. But again, and I want to stress this, you're getting what you pay for, and you're not paying much.

If your station has the consistent IT support to the point where you don't need to worry about support from 11software, then you're all set. If your station doesn't have any stable internal tech support (and you can't consider any student help as "stable"; they'll always graduate eventually) then I'd recommend investigating a solution that provides more tech support, such as BSI's Simian or Broadcast Electronics' AudioVault or Vault2...just to name two.

Back on the positive side of things, JockeyPro also comes with an inherent live-assist method of operation (DJ's manually playing music from your hard drive). It's pretty good overall, and includes a one-click-to-play "JockBox" that's ideal for often-used, short clips (less than 10-20 seconds). The only significant limitation on the live assist side is that it can only make use of one sound card...so you have to manually mix things using the volume sliders within JockeyPro. That's mildly annoying, but I give JockeyPro a lot of credit for making it relatively easy to do; adding support for multiple sound cards would undoubtedly make it a lot more expensive.

Turnkey systems? Generally I recommend getting a turnkey system whenever possible. While technically you might be able to assemble your own hardware more cheaply, you probably aren't getting good hardware and it's a distinct possibility you'll get hardware that isn't as compatible as you need it to be with the software. After all, this is a mission critical system - not a place to skimp! Plus usually when you buy a company's hardware, you'll get better tech support.

BUT...of course there's a but...

But, I'm not sure I recommend 11software's turnkey systems; the specs aren't impressive and given 11software's reported issues with tech support, I'm not sure they're doing much more than buying the hardware and installing JockeyPro on it for you. You can do the same thing with Dell and get a much better 3-year warranty from Dell.

One thing I would recommend: is buying a high-capacity UPS/Battery Backup and also some external storage that's highly redudant. I'm a fan of LaCie products, so while I haven't used their "Two Big" standalone 500GB RAID array, I'd wager it's a pretty good product. GET TWO OF THEM...the 2nd RAID disk is an emergency backup, not your standby "protection". There are lots of handy little backup programs out there - I've heard SecondCopy is quite copy and a trial I demoed once worked excellently for me. Although at home I use SyncToy, a handy free mirroring utility from Microsoft...I think SecondCopy's probably more appropriate for a mission-critical operation, though.

Conclusion: JockeyPro is basically the next logical step up from Winamp Radio Scheduler, but mostly the same restrictions apply...so if you felt WRS wasn't for your station, JockeyPro probably isn't going to be for you either. If, however, you think WRS is for your station, but you really want either A: live-assist capabilities and/or B: some basic voicetracking, then Jockey Pro is an excellent option.

Not sure? Well, here's one basic criteria I'd base my judgment on: if you have a professional GM and perhaps a pro tech guy/engineer; someone who can help make sure all the students & volunteers stick to the overall music ingestion & management system you'll have to create...and also to deal with the inevitable tech support issues and to handle the additional tech knowledge you'll likely want to network the system and manage the storage systems...if you've got that, then JockeyPro is a great "real world teaching tool" because it's pretty easy for the basic DJ to use, and it does allow you to teach the concept of voicetracking. If you don't have those pros at the top to provide consistency and guidance (and a place to call when Murphy's Law hits) then I'd spend more money up front to get better tech support from the vendor.

Staying On-Air When No One's There - the prequel

One quick note that should ALWAYS preceed any thoughts about running automation on your station. The FCC has something to say about you "running unattended" (as in, automation) and it's never wise to ignore the FCC. Sort of like it's never wise to jump out of an airplane with no parachute!

Anyways, the FCC's Dale Bickel has put together a handy primer on unattended operation that I suggest everyone read first.

In short, you must use proper equipment to monitor & control your transmitter gear, and this equipment must be capable of correctly any out-of-tolerance issues or...failing that...calling a live person for help (and/or shutting down things until an engineer can come out and fix them). Without evagenlizing them too much, I will say that Broadcast Tools makes two excellent devices towards this end: the WVRC-8 remote control (or its equally-good little brother, the WRC-4) and the SM-III Plus silence sensor. There's lots of other good remote controls from Burk or Sine Systems, among many others, too. A search through BSW will get you some ideas.

You'll also need to establish several procedures for having a proper control point(s) for your transmitter system, among other things. And don't forget the FCC's Main Studio rules that require, among other things, a "meaningful staff presence" (essentially two full time staff members, one of which has to be a manager-type). Don't forget you must still meet the requirements for EAS, your Public File, and the Station Log, too.

In other words, it's not so simple as just leaving the transmitter on and a Winamp playlist running. If you do that, the FCC can (and will) fine you several thousand dollars.

Staying On-Air When No One's There - part 1

There's been some discussion lately on the listservs about automation systems, so I'm going to do something of a series paraphrasing those discussions. First in the series is Winamp Radio Scheduler, (mirror site) a freeware plugin for the popular Winamp MP3 player software for Windows.

WRS is one of those that I consider "good for the price". By which I mean it's not all that great, but considering that it's completely free...the features list is impressive. Basically it works to manage, create and trigger playlists within Winamp. It's written in Visual Basic, so it's not always 100% stable, but the most recent builds have been fairly crash-resistant. I'd still keep an eye on it about two or three times a month, which is more than good enough for fill-in purposes.

Here's the key features:

1. Jobs, jobs, jobs. First and foremost, you can have lots and lots of "jobs" that can be set to happen once, daily or weekly for any combination of days in the week. Typically a job is used to trigger a particular playlist you've set up. Handy for "dayparting" your station. It can also change the timing of jingles, heavy rotation, and how they're shuffled. More on this in later points...
2. Schedule of "jingles". What your station might call promos, legal ID's, sweepers, stingers, or even just jingles...WRS lumps 'em all together as jingles, and lets you schedule to happen every X minutes. This is great for playing a promo every 10 or 15 minutes so you have good "imaging" of your station.
3. Schedule of heavy rotation. This one's pretty big for a lot of stations, presuming they have a policy of "heavy rotation" for new music or whatever.
4. Live Feed Mode. Perfect for stations that air satellite-fed content, such as NPR or Pacifica Radio. You can schedule a job that triggers live feed mode at a specific time; piping the line-level input of your sound card directly to the output. You'll probably need to handle the audio switching outside of the computer...that's not so cheap, but quite possible with a wide variety of switchers. If you can afford a satellite dish, you can probably afford the switcher. :-)

Since WRS is, at its heart, a Winamp plugin...it's subject to all the benefits and limitations of Winamp. For example, there are certain file formats that don't play nice with Winamp & WRS...although MP3's, MP2's and WAV's all seem pretty safe. It also requires that you put a fair amount of work into pre-screening your MP3's since Winamp has limited ability to screen out poorly-ripped MP3's (too much silence, poor audio quality, no incue/outcue trigger points)

QUIRK: play nice with sound cards? Some sound cards also have problems playing multiple audio files at the same file, which WRS will inherently do. Usually this is a driver problem on cheaper sound cards and there's nothing WRS can do about it. A typical symptom is that WRS appears to play every other track, but nothing but silence comes out of the line out jack of the sound card. This isn't really WRS's fault, but it's a limitation you have to be aware of.

DOWNSIDE: no voicetracking. One major limitation - no voicetracking capacity. So your automated sound will lack much of anything in the way of a human element. For the price, are you really surprised? Technically you can fudge it by setting up Jobs to call specific M3U playlists, and loading the playlist manually with pre-recorded voicetracks. Obviously this takes a LOT of work and thought about how you're going to do it, and the end result still won't be all that great. Ah well, again...it's free.

DOWNSIDE: no live assist. There's also absolutely no "live assist" part of the software...meaning a program that lets a DJ easily play individual tracks or jingles on the air manually as an adjunct to them playing CD's or whatever. This might or might not be relevant to your needs, of course, and you can always pick up another software program like BSI's WaveCart that'll do a good job with live assist. And did I mention WRS is free???

CAVEAT: older versions of Winamp needed? WRS is designed for Winamp 2.x...no promises on how well it'll work with the current 5.x versions of Winamp. If you find you need 2.x, go to the mirror site where Winamp 2.95 is available for download.

In conclusion, I'd say WRS is a great program if you need to get an automated playback system on the air fast; like a temporary setup if you main system fails...or a "just to get started" system while you're putting the time & money into a more comprehensive system. One area where WRS can do reasonably well are college stations where there is usually live DJ's spinning CD's and records, but you need something to fill the gaps on overnights, during school breaks, and when a DJ gets sick and doesn't show up for their shift. At least you'll have something on the air when that occurs. If you're serious about automation for your station, though...you'll quickly find WRS too limiting for your needs.