The beauty of GSelector music scheduling is that it can cater to any type of format or programmer’s music philosophy. You’re not restricted by the old school, “Don’t do this, or this,” instead, GSelector empowers the user to also include, “Do this, this and do that.” This week, we highlighted 5 quick and efficient scheduling tips for programmers looking to improve their rotations, without sacrificing their time. Tighten a category’s spin count with Airplay Starvation, separate segue bans for more specific transitions, work smarter by using copy functions in the Rotation Rules window, make sure you understand the subtle differences between Hour Rotation Rule versus Hour Rotation Goal, and finally, intentionally define your Yesterday, Prior Day and Past Days Rules to help guide GSelector to work with you so that you’re not laboring on the same mundane Editor massages. Remember to identify what you want each transition to sound like and then apply those goals and rules to your Priority List.
Starting with Airplay Starvation, this is a quick on/off goal that allows users to quickly tighten their category spins. For example, if your category rotates roughly 7 spins per week, but you find there are songs that schedule 10 times versus 4 times, this is simply because some of those 4 spun songs feature additional Priority List violations based on the defined attributes. Without having to mathematically analyze all your clocks, rotations and more, try and enable Airplay Starvation. Found within Setup | Station | Features | Advanced, Airplay Starvation works within a 150% – 200% window. Essentially, 150% is 1.5 times though a category and 200% is 2 full cycles through the category. As you near closer to the 150% – 200% window, if a song hasn’t played yet, GSelector will encourage that element to schedule. Important to note: Airplay Starvation is not meant for tight categories with heavy turnover. Save this goal for your recurrents and golds and make sure to copy your Priority List to isolate the categories that could benefit from Airplay Starvation.
While you’re working within the Setup | Station | Features | Advanced subtab, enable the Separate Ban Priorities. This will now separate your Segue Bans within the Priority List. For example, if you’re a Top 40 station and you’re ok with a “Sound Code: Pop into Pop into Pop” transition, but you’re not ok with “Sound Code: Pop into Pop into Pop into Pop,” then don’t sacrifice your Priority List with a single Segue Ban Rule, “Segue Ban: Sound Code,” instead, enable this setting and now you can mark “Sound Code: Pop into Pop into Pop” as breakable and “Sound Code: Pop into Pop into Pop into Pop” as unbreakable.
Pivoting to the Rotation Rules window (found within Goals | Priorities or Goals | Balance), this is a very powerful tool for programmers. Control any attribute for any daypart for any category and don’t be intimidated. This window offers you more control based on the attributes you specifically care about. And don’t forget to work smarter, not harder. Note the F3 to Copy Above Cell and F8 to Copy Above Row. Set your values, isolating the Attribute, Daypart or Category from the Filter above and then F8 to mimic the remaining values. Also, friendly reminder that if you cannot see your desired Attribute, Daypart or Category, simply uncheck “Show Assigned Values.”
Working within the Rotation Rules window, many users like to enable the Hour Rotation Rule. There’s one important distinction that users should remember, Hour Rotation Rule and Goal are based on the hour within the defined daypart. So, if you blindly set the Hour Rotation value to 4, think about each of your dayparts: Overnight (Midnight to 6am) would work, whereas AM Drive (6am – 9am) doesn’t include enough hours to properly rotate the hour and GSelector will do exactly what you tell it to do: rotate out of the hour 4 times, leaving the fourth day in AM Drive unscheduled. Same applies for your Daypart Rotation Rule, especially if you have Alternate Categories or elements that are not called for by the clocks for specific dayparts, like a Saturday Night Party Mix. When all else fails, try switching from Rules to Goals or decrease the values.
Finally, users can properly define their Yesterday, Prior Day and Past Days by going to Setup | Station | Days of the Week or Past Days. Important to note the Station subtab, so these are in fact station specific days. Many programmers prefer to highlight Monday’s Yesterday as Friday, whereas others are fine with Monday’s Yesterday as Sunday. If your programming mind doesn’t worry about specific days of the week, perhaps Past Days would work better for you. Past Days utilizes the number of days back from the current spin. So, if we’re scheduling Monday, 1 Past Days back would be Sunday, 2 would be Saturday, all the way to 7 being the previous Monday. Many users set the % Protect at 100% for 1 (Yesterday), 75% or 100% for 2 (Prior Day), then greatly decrease the values until 7 (Previous Monday), in which case they’ll revert back to 100%. Again, this is all based on your music philosophy.
Speaking of GSelector, we’re now looking for Beta users for GSelector 5.1.0! Test out the latest and greatest scheduling techniques from the worldwide leader in radio software. Don’t forget that RCS is still hiring rare opportunities, double check those backup paths, and we’ll see you next week on your platform of choice: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter Live or Twitch for RCS Live. If you missed the live feed, check out our past videos on the RCS Live Archive: www.rcsworks.com/rcs-live.