It’s an engineer’s favorite time of year – Daylight Savings Time (DST). As a friendly reminder, we reviewed how Zetta and GSelector handle Daylight Savings Time and options to adjust your schedule’s Daylight Savings Time settings. For programmers, we outlined where they would see a difference in their schedule because GSelector is either skipping an hour or adding an hour, causing a slight shift in your weekly rotations and spin counts.
Since “spring forward” is right around the corner, we started with reviewing the Daylight Savings Time behaviors in GSelector and Zetta. Simply put, GSelector will not schedule a 2am hour because we’re “springing forward.” However, you will see a 2am placeholder, reminding the programmer that this is intentional. Some programmers prefer to include Exact Time Marker Resets in their log, just to reinforce the schedule air time difference. Meanwhile, over in Zetta, we replicate that same behavior, with a proper 1am log, a 2am Hour Header, followed immediately by a 3am Hour Header and corresponding 3am scheduled log. During the fall’s “fall back,” expect an additional hour within the 1am the hour. Essentially, 1:59am, followed by a ETM Reset 1:00:00 and then another 60 minutes of content.
REVIEW YOUR LOGS! It’s one of the few times a year that programmers or engineers really must review their workflows and their Sunday morning DST logs. It’s equally important to remind yourself of any additional tasks that are typically executed within the 2am hour and having a backup plan. For example, if you have a macro or GPIO that runs behind the scenes at 2:30am, that macro or GPIO might not be triggered as we’re skipping the 2am hour. Remember, your RCS products will respect the local time zone as defined by the Windows OS time zone on the server.
Speaking of time zones, what if you feature a single GSelector server with multiple stations included within it, spanning across multiple time zones? In that case, head to Setup | Stations | Features | Advanced and make note of the Daylight Savings Time options. There’s an option to Schedule Spring Forward Daylight Savings Hour, Suppress Fall Back Daylight Savings Hour and a Time Zone Override to define a specific Time Zone that is different than the GSelector server. For example, here in the states, Arizona doesn’t honor Daylight Savings Time. They would enable Schedule Spring Forward Daylight Savings Hour so that GSelector will schedule their 2am hour. If for whatever reason there’s a potential issue with your log, don’t forget about the Editor’s Export to Zetta option. Simply click within an hour, like the 3am hour, use the ”Synchronize Hour” and GSelector will manually re-populate the desired hour(s).
From a scheduling standpoint, a reminder that GSelector will do exactly what you tell it to do. Per DST, we’re either scheduling an hour or not. That’s going to affect our rotations. If you utilize kicks via Goals | Categories | Category Group Settings, realize that with a 2am missing, that’s going to push your kick rotations. If we’re adding an hour, like “falling back” in the fall, then we’re kicking earlier and you’ll see a slight difference to your rotations. It’s all normal behaviors, but many programmers can forget about that hour shift and might think there’s something wrong with their GSelector.
Did you know that there’s over 150 how to videos available on our website under the Blog and RCS Live section? If there’s a specific topic, view one of the videos and use the Seach field on the right to find videos based on keywords. Otherwise, RCS will hit the road once again in 2025. Connect with us at a local event or reach out to us for additional support. NAB 2025 is right around the corner and RCS is excited to announced new products and features, like AudioDisplay and ZettaCloud. Keep an eye out for future RCS Lives to learn more!