Did you know that as part of your GSelector contract, you also have access to Linker, the imaging portion of GSelector? From our experience, we’ve seen users commonly schedule basic pieces of imaging with simple rotations. And although there’s nothing wrong with that, for this week’s RCS Live, we decided to expand on the possibilities of what you can achieve with advanced concepts, utilizing Linker’s Related Links. Start thinking about content specific transitions to make your station stand out against the competition.
There are two types of Related Links: Fly-In and Clock Related Links, including Leading Links and Trailing Links. Both can be found under Linker | Related Links and their corresponding subtabs: Fly-In and Clock. The concept behind Related Links is that we do not want to schedule a generic piece of imaging, rather a specific piece of imaging that is tied to the scheduled song. This is called a relationship and there are many different types. We highly encourage you and your team to work with the empowering mindset that, “We want to do this and this.” Don’t settle for, “Don’t schedule this.” Identify what piece of imaging you would want to schedule next to a particular song, category, or scheduling attribute. Once you identify that transition, establish a Related Link Relationship.
Fly-In Links are the last unofficial Pass Order in the scheduling process and will schedule in addition to the existing schedule. Whereas Leading Links and Trailing Links are included in the Clocks, most users prefer to use the Fly-In Link Only Replace option so that after GSelector schedules a generic piece of imaging, we would replace it with a more specific sweeper. Programmers will match a Song Attribute on a Link Attribute. And in GSelector 5.0.0, we’ll introduce the concept of Link Attribute Match, which will further expand your relationship possibilities.
In the video, we review each Fly-In, Leading and Trailing Link Relationship setting and its purpose. We also introduced examples of how users would incorporate Related Links into their everyday workflows. They could establish a “New Music Intro” so that whenever the “New Song” is scheduled, there’s a corresponding “New Music Intro” sweeper. Or if you’re a heritage station with a massive collection of Artist Intros, then use a scheduling attribute like Content and tie artist sweepers to their corresponding attributes. If you’re hosting an upcoming concert, like RCS-Fest example, then create an attribute: RCS-Fest and link it to any of your RCS-Fest performers, so that whenever GSelector schedules an RCS-Fest performer, you have a piece of RCS-Fest imaging tied to the song. Users can expand on this, creating two types of sweepers based on their corresponding attributes: “Enter to Win Your Tickets to RCS-Fest now at rcsworks.com” and “Another chance to win your RCS-Fest tickets coming up in XYZ.” Once you start to understand the philosophy of, “I want this to schedule,” Linker has endless possibilities.
What about forward momentum? With Zetta’s Link-Song chain type, Zetta will do its best to always play a piece of dry imaging over the song’s intro, right down to the millisecond. Users can define their Link-Song chains in their GSelector clocks and then create Segue Ban specific relationships with attributes like “Fully Produced,” “5 Seconds Dry,” and “10+ Seconds Dry.” After assigning them to the corresponding pieces of imaging, create multiple Segue Bans so that a “Fully Produced cannot schedule into a 5 Second Dry Song Intro or a 10+ Second Dry Song Intro.” Users can also mass change their songs by sorting Intro time, coping the desired assets into a Browse List and filtering them for the Multi Song Changer.
We also encourage users to keep their imaging fresh, without adding additional work. If you’re recording a 10 second sweeper, full of all the production bells and whistles, then take the same piece of imaging and split it into three sweepers: 10 seconds fully produced, 5 seconds of produced and 5 seconds of dry and finally a vocal only, 10 seconds of dry imaging. Now, that one sweeper turns into three sweepers. Keeping your station fresh with minimal work.
Speaking of GSelector 5.0.0, we’re always looking for Beta users to test out the latest and greatest RCS features, like the new Zetta2GO Voice Track module in Zetta 5.21.1. If you’re interested in our Beta program, reach out to your local RCS contact. We have some great RCS Live topics on the horizon, so don’t forget to check us out on Facebook, Twitch, YouTube and Twitter every Thursday at 11am ET!