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Clear Channel automation screw-up

MarcB

MarcB

Why does Clear Channel have so many automation screw-ups? Last night I was picking up Worcester's WSRS 96.1 while driving in Wolcott, Connecticut and just before 7PM "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele began playing. The song pots down and then there was a quick WSRS legal ID and into The Delilah Show.

They have similar automation issues with Country 92.5 at Hartford when switching from the Premium Choice to Premiere Radio Network's After Midnight Show at 12AM every night and the same thing when switching from After Midnight to the local morning show at 5AM.

While personally I've never programmed an automation system at a radio station, I'm sure it can be done without these problems. When I burn music onto a CD the program tells me whether or not I have enough space for all the songs or not. If I don't I make sure to not put on a song that only will partially fit on the disc. Doesn't the automation system work the same way? Doesn't it let you know if something is going to run past the top of the hour?
 
Doesn't sound like an issue to me. Enough music was scheduled (in fact, a little over) and when they automation system hit hard fade command to fire the LEGAL ID and start Delilah it did. Without a live body in the studio at all times, it's tough to time out exactly. Therefore, you over schedule and fade a song down. It's better than dead air, is it not?
 
MarcB said:
Why does Clear Channel have so many automation screw-ups? Last night I was picking up Worcester's WSRS 96.1 while driving in Wolcott, Connecticut and just before 7PM "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele began playing. The song pots down and then there was a quick WSRS legal ID and into The Delilah Show.

They have similar automation issues with Country 92.5 at Hartford when switching from the Premium Choice to Premiere Radio Network's After Midnight Show at 12AM every night and the same thing when switching from After Midnight to the local morning show at 5AM.

While personally I've never programmed an automation system at a radio station, I'm sure it can be done without these problems. When I burn music onto a CD the program tells me whether or not I have enough space for all the songs or not. If I don't I make sure to not put on a song that only will partially fit on the disc. Doesn't the automation system work the same way? Doesn't it let you know if something is going to run past the top of the hour?
Click to expand...

Back in the days before consolidation and deregulation, there WOULD have been a "live body" in the studio to handle that transition, and such a fade-out would have received a "hotline" call from the PD or GM within about one minute. These automation systems CAN be manually adjusted; the problem is that no one takes pride in the product anymore, thus the widespread practice that you point out, and I'm happy to see that you DID point it out. The problem is, the present generation is growing up conditioned to such sloppy radio that they don't even notice that it IS sloppy. (And that includes today's crop of Program Directors!) I used to have to "backtime" to network news every hour on the hour, so why can't someone take a few extra minutes to program an hour of music to, let's say: 59:55. Five seconds of dead air is preferable to chopping a song in the middle, IMO. Produce a legal ID with a :30 second long instrumental bed (or longer) so that it fades out when it's Delilah-Time. Now, where do I send my bill for the consultancy? :)

OK rant *off*
 
Back when Clear Channel owned what is now WVOM in Augusta, I was listening one evening at around 6:00 to Howie Carr when all of a sudden there was dead air for several minutes followed by the closed-circuit (as it were) satellite feed that Red Sox affiliates apparently receive prior to each game. That was bad enough; what was worse was that the station wasn't even a Red Sox affiliate. I called the studio from my cell phone. Needless to say, no one was there. This kind of thing used to happen all the time. Added to that was the rip-and-read news coverage in which the morning news was taped and repeated at :03 all day long. I haven't had any use for CC since.
 
frnkp2000 said:
Back in the days before consolidation and deregulation, there WOULD have been a "live body" in the studio to handle that transition, and such a fade-out would have received a "hotline" call from the PD or GM within about one minute.
Click to expand...

That's a nice rosy picture you've painted there, but it's just not true. There was plenty of automation happening, especially in smaller markets, long before Telecom '96. I can't tell you how many stations weren't airing ID's and were just a tape machine in a closet long before the 2000's.

Yes, there are better ways to do it... but to act like this is a Clear Channel problem or a consolidation problem means you're just ignoring the facts.
 
The FACTS are that these stations go unattended and unmonitored after business hours. When these problems occur, no one responds and no one cares. Another FACT is that the GM sits scratching his head at the end of the quarter wondering why sales are down. Sloppy on-air practices are the reason.

If anyone still can't figure out how to fix their automation system, let me know and I'll be happy to come over and show you in exchange for lunch. :) I'ts REALLY not rocket science.

reelyradio, may I ask how you would know that there were, in fact no stations that ran live and local and all had automation in the 80's and before? Not a "rosy picture" at all. I worked at plenty of them. My scenario is quite real. I was there.
 
frnkp2000 said:
The FACTS are that these stations go unattended and unmonitored after business hours. When these problems occur, no one responds and no one cares.
Click to expand...

Larry King used to tell a story about his days in Miami as a late night DJ. He was the only person in the building. The phone rings and it's a lady offering some evening pleasure. Larry of course wanted to oblige. So he put on a long record and left the building. Had his fun with the lady. Then returned to the station. Except he forgot his keys inside the building. He was locked out, and the record was ending. Now what?

Sure, the station was monitored (Larry was listening on his car radio) but there was nothing he could do. Just wait until sunrise when the morning DJ came and unlocked the door. When Larry told this story on the radio, he would be flooded with calls from other radio guys telling similar stories. Just because a station has a live body assigned doesn't mean he's actually going to be there all night. Automation is more dependable, and less likely to leave the station for some evening delight.
 
It was never my intention to imply that automation wasn't dependable. The problem lies in the human factor of making it work smoothly. A few extra minutes of care would prevent the repeated scenario that MarcB and DougD described.

What used to be standard procedure is now apparently considered anal-retentiveness.
 
frnkp2000 said:
It was never my intention to imply that automation wasn't dependable. The problem lies in the human factor of making it work smoothly. A few extra minutes of care would prevent the repeated scenario that MarcB and DougD described.
Click to expand...

But you're saying there's a direct connection between sloppy transitions during the overnight shift and a drop in sales. That is fiction.
 
frnkp2000 said:
Where did I say "overnights"? Can't seem to find that on the re-read.
Click to expand...

That's what this thread is about. Read the OP. And you attributed the problem to stations going "unmanned after hours."
 
Ah that I did. BUSINESS hours is what I wrote. That means 9am-5pm. The term "overnights" generally applies to the 12 midnight to 5 or 6am time period.
 
frnkp2000 said:
These automation systems CAN be manually adjusted; the problem is that no one takes pride in the product anymore, thus the widespread practice that you point out, and I'm happy to see that you DID point it out. The problem is, the present generation is growing up conditioned to such sloppy radio that they don't even notice that it IS sloppy. (And that includes today's crop of Program Directors!) I used to have to "backtime" to network news every hour on the hour, so why can't someone take a few extra minutes to program an hour of music to, let's say: 59:55. Five seconds of dead air is preferable to chopping a song in the middle, IMO. Produce a legal ID with a :30 second long instrumental bed (or longer) so that it fades out when it's Delilah-Time. Now, where do I send my bill for the consultancy? :)

OK rant *off*
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with NexGen, Clear Channel's in-house automation system, but I've worked with several others, and none of them can transition elegantly from a recorded music show to a network feed. Even if one were to drop something in manually, there may not be a cut in the library that is the right length, let alone one that follows the rules the PD has established for scheduling songs. There are a number of ways to cheat, such as "time-squeezing" the last song, but all of them involve compromise.

Once, doing a classical shift on a station in upstate NY, I had to time out to NPR news at the top of the hour, which would be followed by a show on reel-to-reel. I found a piece that would fit, and stretched my outro to time out precisely to the top of the hour... and guess what turned out to be the first piece of music on the recorded show? Why, the one I had just played, of course.

Sometimes you can't win no matter how much effort you put in.
 
It's technically possible. But it's not easy. You need a scheduler software and a deep enough pool of music to allow it to grab a cut of the correct length to run before the TOH break, and yes there's often a little time compression/expansion involved. I know several products that can do it near-flawlessly.

However, the "gotcha" is that if your library's not deep enough, you'll often hear the same damn track playing right before the satellite show every time! Been there, done that.

If you have a device like an Audio Time Manager from 25-Seven Systems, you can even time compress the satellite feed up to a few minutes to help the automation fill time properly. THAT is probably a real bear to program, but it's theoretically possible. Probably easier to schedule properly like I describe above.

At WHWS we had a similar problem; we didn't use a scheduler for music shows. I just had a playlist set up to randomly grab tracks from the 4000 or so in the library. When it came time to transition to satellite at 1AM each night, I had a command set to fade out the music playlist over a 10 second span, have a second of quiet, and then start the local break which was timed precisely to end ahead of the satellite feed.

It sounded awful. Especially when, by random chance, the fadeout would happen in the middle of a local break! The automation was set up for: two tracks, whisper, two tracks, then a local break of a whisper, weather forecast, community calendar, promo, underwriting spot, then whisper. Rinse, lather, repeat. Really basic but it was an LPFM and the local community listeners actually liked it because it meant at least 75% of the time we were playing music instead of commercials. :)

Still, I set it so there was at least two minutes of local break before the satellite feed. That helped reduce the odds that anyone who tuned in to hear the satellite programming (Radio Bilingue, very different from our alt/rock during the day) would hear the nasty transition.
 
Another FACT is that the GM sits scratching his head at the end of the quarter wondering why sales are down. Sloppy on-air practices are the reason.

I sold approximately a gazillion bucks worth of advertising back in the day, and I must say that the number of sales I recall losing, or anyone else on staff losing, due to technical glitches of any type, were zero, give or take a zero.

Over the air radio today sounds better than ever and is technically cleaner. The problem is that the 60 year-old traditional business model no longer works.

That GM isn't scratching his head, he's sticking pins in a Jeff Bezos doll and wondering if it's too late to put out a 'hit' on Craig Newmark.

Regards,
TSB
 
What some stations have done to solve this is to have an insturmental song fill time time after a song has finished and before it is time to switch to a live aired show via satellite. It sounds much better to fade an instumental song early than a vocal. However I bet with some formats it would be difficult to find a variety of insturmentals to fill the time.
 
taylorjsdad said:
What some stations have done to solve this is to have an insturmental song fill time time after a song has finished and before it is time to switch to a live aired show via satellite. It sounds much better to fade an instrumental song early than a vocal. However I bet with some formats it would be difficult to find a variety of instrumentals to fill the time.
Click to expand...

Congratulations! THAT is the simplest and best solution! Don't have enough instrumentals in your music library? Try some unused, format-appropriate cuts from your PRODUCTION library! Get six or eight of 'em (longer versions) and mark them PROGRAMMING-DO NOT USE in the book. The KISS system is the best system. (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

If having a better product doesn't necessarily mean attracting more revenue, then yes, I must be living under a 60 year old outdated business model! The few great stations that are still out there aren't happy with "good enough". They always ask, "How can we do it better?" That was my business model. Shouldn't it be yours too?
 
Best top of the hour, on vacation summer of 70; Sunday progressive show. very end of Cream's " Badge", live ID"WLNH-FM, Laconia, Jingle "CBS News" TOTH
 
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