Powergold’s advanced clock system allows for a wide variety of non-music events to be placed side by side with songs.   These non-music events can do everything from forcing an up tempo song at the top of an hour, to scheduling artist blocks, to automation commands.  This article focuses on the last of these commands, and specifically how Powergold’s automation command schedules can make the interface between Powergold and your automation system more robust, trouble-free, and less error prone.

Music Director’s and Program Director’s think in terms of music and imaging, primarily.  The main purpose of adjusting a clock from their perspective is to alter the flow of music or imaging elements to achieve a particular programming goal.  Unfortunately, life isn’t always as simple as just programming music and imaging categories and then running schedules.  Automation commands are a way of life in today’s computerized playout environment.  These commands are put in Powergold clocks to achieve features like keeping an automation system running right on time (such as ENCO’s BRANCH commands), and satellite source switching for syndicated programming.  Putting these commands directly into Powergold clocks poses no harm, but in many cases there is an alternative that keeps those commands behind the scenes and out of your clocks.  Enter the automation command scheduler.

Automation command schedules allow users to build a completely autonomous set of schedules where commands are “superimposed” onto an existing schedule using 24 by 7, song by song granularity.  This allows you to say I need a command at 3am only to run before the first song, and only on Monday’s schedule.  This command would be placed into a command schedule, placed relative to song positions and never be seen again by MD’s or PD’s looking at their clocks.  This simplification not only makes your clocks look cleaner, but it also reduces the possibility of an inadvertent deletion of the command or misplacement of it.  

Of course, seldom would you have a command schedule consisting of just one command.  Rather, you would plan out your programming week and build a command schedule that accounts for as many automation commands as you can think of for each hour of each day.  Once you are finished the schedule can be renamed to something easy for you to remember, like “ENCO – Standard”.  Multiple schedules can be created and managed using the Automation Command Schedule editor found on the edit menu at the top of the main Powergold window.  These schedules can be “subbed” in and out for special purpose programming at different times of year, and even used to create a copy to prepare for a new automation system without losing your existing command schedule.

Command schedules work by looking at each song position in your Powergold music schedule and then determining if a command needs to be inserted at the position we are looking at.  This happens after all music editing is completed, right when the automation output file is created.  You never see these commands in a music log, and you never have to touch the schedules once they are created unless you change programming, or automation systems. 

The editor has a variety of features built to make your life easier.  A few of them are: a) printing an hour’s command schedule to a text file, b) printing an entire command schedule (24/7 worth of commands) to file, and c) copying one hours schedule to any other hour (even one on a different day, and even to multiple hours at a time).  Using these tools it is easy to rapidly build a comprehensive command schedule, even if it’s highly complex and repetitive from hour to hour.

Keep in mind, the goal is to remove command positions from your programming clocks, if at all possible.  For the most part this is easy, but you may encounter situations where it isn’t possible (or desirable) to put the command into a schedule.  This doesn’t pose a problem for Powergold, as it will simply layer the command schedule onto your existing music schedule.

One note of caution:  since these command schedules are behind the scenes, it can be easy to forget they are there.  If you decide to use automation command schedules, it’s best to stick with them to minimize confusion, and try to avoid placing commands in your normal music clocks.  Also, don’t forget to tell your automation output to use the schedule you create.  Do this by going to the setup tab of Automation and checking the box labeled “Use Automation Command Scheduler”, the ellipse button next to this check box allows you to pick which schedule should be active.

For assistance setting up automation command schedules for your station, you can always call Powergold’s technical support, day or night, and we will walk you through it.  Call us at 501-821-1123.