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A Technical Pain In The Butt …
August 25, 2020
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Radio engineers maintain and repair station equipment. It would be difficult for a station to run smoothly without an engineering department or tech support to fix things when they break.
Automation Issues …
Whenever syndicated programming is delivered by satellite, one of the worst things that can happen is when a malfunction causes a problem with either switching to the network feed for national commercials or returning to local programming. I'm sure you can feel this PDs pain concerning his station's automation system and his conversation with their engineering tech support.PD: My daily syndicated show has problems on our end when it is time to switch from local to network. The problem is inconsistent and happens one day and then it may not happen for two days before it happens again.
Coach: What’s your engineer saying?
PD: He thinks it's an issue with our automation system. Other stations in our cluster do not seem to be having with any problems with their satellite syndication. I have repeatedly been on the line with the tech support engineers of the automation system we use, and I keep getting told to read the manual or I’m asked to pay for the updates. What can I do?
Coach: Tell me what the problem is.
PD: At the end of my 5a hour, our automation should hard sink at 59:59 and the next command is the satellite trigger. But sometimes nothing happens, and the songs scheduled at the end of the hour all play and we join the show 10 minutes or more into it. Something is screwed up.
Coach: Where are your breaks in your last local hour?
PD: We only take one break, at 12 after.
Coach: Let me make some calls and get back to you.
PD: I would appreciate that.
Coach: Okay I spoke with some engineering friends and they suggested checking your automation systems format scheduler for entry discrepancies and getting with your traffic department to look at the daily log template to see if things are consistent. My engineering brain trust also recommended that you try adding an extra sync command at the top of the hour before the satellite trigger and not at the end at 59:59.
Please let me know if these suggestions address your issues, and good luck.
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