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Question for the production pros

A

ArtSpooner

Guest
On Monday and Tuesday of the past week, the Big Show didn't even come close to breaking at scheduled times. One of the days they had Tony Mazz on, I can't recall what was happening the other day. They got so far behind that at one point the 4 O'clock hour started at 4:35.

Does this raise havoc with the producers and the sponsors?
 
Depends...being that far off the clock can indeed be near-impossible to "make up" without having to sacrifice some spot breaks, and that means make-goods for the sales staff (something they undoubtedly hate doing). But there are nifty technologies out there that can work wonders for getting back "on time" without the audience realizing it. One prime example that comes to mind is the 25-Seven Systems' "ATM" or Audio Time Manager. FWIW, one of their engineers lives right near Packard's Corner, no less.

I saw it debut at NAB a few years back and I know that several Boston-area stations have at least one by now. They're amazingly good about "stalling" a live feed until you reach a natural break point and then playing faster to "catch up" without it being audible. I've heard it do about 10% speedup (squeezing an extra 6 minutes into each hour) without ANY audible changes, and you can push it as hard as 20% but the sound does get kinda wonky above 12-15%; not quite Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks sounding, more just that the cadence is way too fast so your brain knows something is wrong. Regardless, it mostly works by analyzing the pauses and strategically removing microseconds of silent pauses...although obviously the algorithm is a lot more sophisticated than just that.

I think there's also a device, or maybe it's software, called the "Cashbox" that works similarly. I remember hearing that Rush hates it supposedly because it cuts out a lot of his trademark pauses.

So depending on how much time (like, a few hours) they had to make up for the 30-40 minute delay, it's possible an ATM could've gotten them "back on time" without sacrificing any spot breaks.
 
Where it creates havoc is if a segment goes long, say for breaking news, and the station has sold all its inventory.... there are no PSA's or promo's that can be dropped to make up time... it becomes a cluster bleep to get all the spots aired, or decide which ones have to be dropped, then make all the log corrections and let the traffic people know they have to make good on the lost spots. The commercial breaks are not long enough as it is right... try adding another 5 minutes to the ten you are already scheduled to run at :40 to make up for the ones that didn't get aired at :20.

The Board Op signs an affidavit that all the spots on the log have been aired and it is considered fraud to say you ran an ad, bill for it, and not have run it.
 
These types of devices are more useful, say, for adding an extra :30 break
during the course of a half hour program. Sales types love this stuff -
the public, not so much...TV56 used to do this on certain shows, in the late 80's.
I remember that the reruns of the show "Facts of Life" was one of them...

If you are that far off of the program schedule, normally you would join the following program "in progress", or blow off the following program entirely, and jigger the breaks until you are "caught up". (priority: paid spots run, local first, then national; promo's and psa's if there's time...) This is where it certainly helps to have a heads up master control operator!

An extreme example of this: 1981 I was working for a local radio station. President Reagan was shot. Owner/GM says "go to network". Stayed with the network for several hours. Station was a daytimer. 15 minutes before signoff time, the GM says "run all of the paid commercial spots we preempted for the network coverage". 15 minutes of commercial spots back-to-back-to-back, sign off, turn off the transmitter. If you wanted to find out what happened to Mr. Reagan, you either had to tune elsewhere (no internet then...) or catch our newscast when we signed on the next day. Welcome to the wonderful world of commercial broadcasting! ;D
 
This problem could be circumvented entirely if WEEI didn't have Tony Massarotti on in the first place. If his radio appearances are anything like his baseball notes column, I'll bet he said at least 6 minutes worth of nonsense.
 
Will said:
This problem could be circumvented entirely if WEEI didn't have Tony Massarotti on in the first place. If his radio appearances are anything like his baseball notes column, I'll bet he said at least 6 minutes worth of nonsense.
Click to expand...

His appearance was right after he wrote the column defending Tomase and, in effect, called all of the fans losers and morons. Ordway ripped him for about an hour straight and then turned him over to the callers. They got behind in the first hour and even more behind in the second hour. This wasn't like the president was shot; it seemed to be controllable. They just chose not to control it. I don't think taking a break would have affected the show.
 
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