Music Scheduling by Computer

[davideduardo]

There are been many threads and posts about music scheduling and the frequency of repetition and related subjects to the point of infinite annoyance.

So, to put a little bit of this in perspective, I've obtained the manuals for two computer-based music scheduling programs from the 80's. One is Generation II, which I first used in around 1984 at WDOY in Puerto Rico and the other is Autoselect from Jefferson Pilot's software company.

Both used the computer to improve on the widely used colored card systems or the even more traditional "play from the front and place at the back" bin system. Most of the functions were very basic, but they really improved rotations and things like artist separation.

The are at http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Odds-and-Ends.htm on the line labeled "programming".

The manuals are short, and should show anyone interested in the way music is played on the radio the way clocks and song play is done...

 

[Thomps2525]

Thank you, David. The 1982 Jefferson Pilot Data System allowed for a maximum of 2500 songs. Each song could be assigned to one of a maximum of 16 different categories and each category had a maximum of 225 sub-categories. Songs could be sorted by style, mood, tempo, chart position and other factors. David, you say that these music scheduling programs improved rotations and artist separations, but do you think listeners noticed? Do listeners even care about artist separation? Ron Jacobs, KHJ's program director from 1965 to 1969, often phoned the DJs to complain if he heard two r&b songs in a row. I can't imagine any listeners being upset. And in 1982 were there programmers and music directors who resented seeing their jobs replaced by a computer?

I watch baseball games on television and I am amazed at how much time the managers spend analyzing statistics and data and match-ups and "wins above replacement" numbers and changing the positions of the fielders each time a different batter comes to the plate. In baseball as well as in radio, it seems that hardly any manager goes by "gut feeling" anymore. The "man vs. machine" battles are being won by machines.

 

[K.M. Richards]

And in 1982 were there programmers and music directors who resented seeing their jobs replaced by a computer?

There aren't programmers and music directors in 2015 who feel "replaced by a computer", so that wasn't the case in 1982 either.

My first experiences with computers in programming came with the earliest automation systems that went beyond the old thumbwheels, dials, and pinboards. I used a Schafer 903 at the first station I programmed, and it certainly didn't "replace" me; the station owner saw it as a tool to be used to make our programming consistent and also to free us from being tied down to the control room. With the automation and the proper scheduling, what you describe Ron Jacobs reacting to wouldn't happen, because he would have had scheduling rules in place to prevent two R&B songs ... or two female vocals ... or even two songs whose titles began with the letter "R", if he had reason to ... from playing back-to-back.

Our use of automation was a little more simplistic, dealing with pre-sequenced songs on reel-to-reel tape and then playing the tapes in a pre-defined order by category. It was easy for us to see what songs were going to play for the entire hour just by listening to a few seconds in the cue channel and consulting the contents list to see where the tape was cued to. Then we could pre-cart voicetracks and the machine was essentially a "board op" putting it all together. And if we saw conflicts such as songs from the same artist playing too close together it was easy to fast forward a reel before cutting the voicetracks.

In 1987, I worked for the first time with music scheduling software at a station with live jocks and carted music. Provided everyone followed their music logs, it was easy to prevent artist duplication, songs playing at the same time two days in a row, etc. And we still had a PD and MD (I was the backup for both, in addition to doing afternoon drive).

I even reverse-engineered the process at a station in 1989 which didn't use scheduling software; I had morning drive and would resequence the index cards for all the current categories to properly separate from the previous day (by keeping a log of the previous day for comparison). If I'd had a computer to do that, it would have saved me several minutes a day but it wouldn't have replaced me.

Where do you get these notions?

 

[michael hagerty]

Ron Jacobs, KHJ's program director from 1965 to 1969, often phoned the DJs to complain if he heard two r&b songs in a row. I can't imagine any listeners being upset.

No, but then yesterday, you told us you were also a KGFJ listener. So you liked R&B. KHJ's audience was made up of different people who (individually) might not have liked R&B or Country or MOR or instrumentals or bubblegum or hard rock, but would sit through one of those to get to something they liked....because there weren't the choices there are now. Jacobs wisely understood that two might be a stretch and could cost KHJ audience. And, you might remember, KHJ under Jacobs won in the ratings against competitors that weren't so strict about their music scheduling and their image.

 

[TheBigA]

The "man vs. machine" battles are being won by machines.

Interesting point. Just want to point out that the machines don't invent themselves. If the machines are winning, it's because we programmed them to win.

 

[landtuna]

Big A has a great point.

Machines have some advantages over their human counterpart:

They don't get tired of repetitive tasks.
They are faster than the average human.
They don't call in sick (most of the time anyway).
Most are cheaper to operate than a human doing the same tasks.

However....

It takes a human to design the machine's function and that includes anticipating every motion available. Failure to anticipate can bring disastrous results.

A certain amount of real-time monitoring and pre-install testing is absolutely required to ensure the machine is doing what the owner desires and can deal with unanticipated events such as recovery from power or media failure. We haven't reached the "set it and forget it" level of reliability quite yet.

And don't forget the backup - media and machine. Machines might not get sick like humans but they do fail every so often.

 

[davideduardo]

Thank you, David. The 1982 Jefferson Pilot Data System allowed for a maximum of 2500 songs. Each song could be assigned to one of a maximum of 16 different categories and each category had a maximum of 225 sub-categories. Songs could be sorted by style, mood, tempo, chart position and other factors. David, you say that these music scheduling programs improved rotations and artist separations, but do you think listeners noticed?

The idea is not to have listeners notice because what you wanted when you switched to computer assisted music scheduling is better control than you could have when doing music scheduling by hand. The idea is to have very consistent flow and feel in every music segment or sweep. The more factors you could control according to your own feel as a programmer, the tighter the sound.

The objective was to create a listening experience that was better than that of other stations.

An example of the importance of flow, fit and feel could be seen in the markets where there were several Beautiful Music stations in the 70's. Except for having different custom versions of pop songs, Phil Stout and Marlin Taylor and Darryl Peters had access to the same tunes. It was, first, who had the best flow. Then, second, who executed the best.

Music scheduling software helps to have the best flow. A good PD makes the execution impeccable.

Do listeners even care about artist separation? Ron Jacobs, KHJ's program director from 1965 to 1969, often phoned the DJs to complain if he heard two r&b songs in a row. I can't imagine any listeners being upset. And in 1982 were there programmers and music directors who resented seeing their jobs replaced by a computer?

This was explained in Michael's post... listeners noticed if you played two songs they liked less in a row. In the case of r&b, there could have been listeners who could hear one at a time, but who were not partisans of most r&b and who would not feel good over two.

Did carpenters lose their jobs when power drills and saws were first available? Nope. They just had the ability to work better, faster and with better quality. Music scheduling software takes constant adjusting and tweaking. As the composition of the currents changes on a hit music station, the rules have to be adjusted. As different artists have more currents or fewer ones, the separations have to be adjusted. As callout (which is now often web based) and other weekly data arrives, songs are moved or restricted.

I watch baseball games on television and I am amazed at how much time the managers spend analyzing statistics and data and match-ups and "wins above replacement" numbers and changing the positions of the fielders each time a different batter comes to the plate. In baseball as well as in radio, it seems that hardly any manager goes by "gut feeling" anymore. The "man vs. machine" battles are being won by machines.

But all the statistics in the world don't create a "natural" or a well trained player. That's the art. The statistics help the manager set the batting order, decide who pitches against what team, and lots of other factors. But those decisions, as statistically based as they may be, are still gut feel judgement calls.

 

[davideduardo]

And don't forget the backup - media and machine. Machines might not get sick like humans but they do fail every so often.

At significant radio stations, systems like music scheduling are backed up over a network or, in many cases, the application is run on a server which has automatic backup and runs on RAID systems.

Anything important has highly redundant systems. Just like we have backup transmitters, genny sets, UPS systems to cover the genny startup time, etc.

Storage is so cheap that even non-mission critical computer usage can be highly redundant. I run my website on a RAID server, have a real time backup on the authoring computer, store all files on two separate RAID NAS machines in different places, and do manual backups every day on a rotating set of 8 hard drives (one week plus one day). If I can do that, think what a major radio station will do to insure that commercials are not missed and that airtime is not lost.