Whether it’s the state-sponsored broadcaster China Radio International CRI, or a small station such as Radio Weifang, the RCS China team of Alex Meng, Terry Li, David Xu, Jamie Du, Zhu Yong, XX Han, CC Du and Lucy Liu has been hard at work over the past six months, making over 15 installations, including new as well as upgrades for existing clients.
The list includes CRI’s Hit-FM Channel, the second oldest RCS client in China, with over 15 years running Selector and GSelector. Also on the list is Radio Xuzhou, the newest RCS client, located in the Southeast of China.
Despite the size and number of stations involved, the tasks are very similar. Machines with GSelector and Zetta are set up in an office or conference room. Program directors can get a head start on the work of building or transferring music libraries, customizing layouts, hot keys and clocks. In instances where there is an upgrade from earlier software such as NexGen, there is usually a dedicated workstation where users can send their content over to Zetta.
While that is going on, the RCS China team is beginning GSelector and/or Zetta setup. At the same time, the station engineers are busy assigning audio to the stations for the clocks which have been created earlier. While some members the RCS China crew are running through the final station configuration, others are preparing for training the station staff. Station techs are responsible for workstation configuration and standardization. While the RCS China team explains the software, a member of the station will typically elaborate or clarify how this works with local business processes.
With the station staff trained and the machines ready, it’s time for cutover. Typically commercials are loaded in the morning and log integrity is verified. Once cutover is made, the system is closely checked. While most transitions are seamless, there can be minor issues that need to be fixed such as issues with device drivers, intermittent cables or adapters, or improperly configured GPIO devices. At the end, all that’s left is tying down loose ends, such as fixing clock constructs in GSelector where there were wrong macros and spot block positions.
The team adds that one of the reasons that Zetta is so popular is because it is available in Chinese. Other language options are English, Spanish and Taiwanese.