Oh, what a feeling to be on the road and get to interact with everyone again. NAB 2022 was incredible and thank you to the entire RCS and NAB team for making it all happen. We can’t wait for NAB 2023! If you didn’t get to stop by our RCS booth, we wanted to provide you with a recap of what you missed. Many of our users wanted to discuss RCS Cloud Disaster Recovery (Radio World 2022 Best of Show Award for Disaster Recovery), GSelector’s S3, storing forward content, Revma’s in-store radio, artificial intelligence and more.
Starting with RCS Cloud Disaster Recovery, many of our engineers wanted to further understand how they can back up all their audio, schedules, metadata, SQL backups and more in the cloud. Think of your RCS Cloud instance as a completely separate market, only in an AWS S3 container versus on site. We’ve done deeper dives into RCS Cloud in past RCS Lives, so if you’re interested in learning more about RCS Cloud, check out our archive at: www.rcsworks.com/rcs-live and keep an eye on future RCS Lives as we continue to evolve RCS Cloud from disaster recovery into everyday automation.
Next, many programmers are looking into ways to maximize their staff by connecting sites through GSelector’s S3, or Schedule Subscription Service. This allows a Format Captain or music scheduler champion to construct a single master music log, or a Publisher log, and then GSelector will export that log to an unlimited number of Subscribers that will receive the master log. There’s one important factor here: the Subscribers can still maintain a local identify with their own clocks, imaging, spot blocks and more. Plus, GSelector’s S3 features extensive customizable programming options for users to truly cater their local content, like overrides, subscription types, time shifts, and multiple programming profiles. In addition to GSelector’s S3 exporting a master music log, RCS clients incorporate Zetta’s Z-Cast to further share audio and metadata between sites. Now your clusters are all connected!
While at NAB, RCS was excited to debut the brand-new Aquira Cloud. This cloud companion piece to Aquira allows users to start to integrate with Triton and other advertising systems. Users would create the contract in Aquira, access Aquira Cloud through Aquira2GO and then any metadata or numbers are directly saved in Aquira. We’ll be showcasing Aquira Cloud in an RCS Live in a couple weeks.
Since it is NAB, what are some of our options regarding unique radio configurations? For example, we’ve seen a couple requests from users who want to feature programming offsite or without Internet. RCS has partnered with a couple vendors to feature a piece of hardware, like a Barix, Raspberry Pi or Sound4 box, that can include audio and schedules for playout. As in, a storing forward content workflow. And with Revma’s streaming options, like In-Store Radio, RCS is equipped to deliver unique methods of getting your programming from point A to point B.
Finally, if “the cloud” was 2019’s NAB buzzword, we heard a lot of questions surrounding AI, artificial intelligence. Understanding that there are many different forms and interpretations of AI, from our perspective, AI can directly relate to automatic voice translation or utilizing AI to achieve a desired workflow. The good news? RCS has been investigating both behind the scenes. As the worldwide leader in radio software, we’re always forecasting the future of radio and artificial intelligence is part of that discussion.
We’re continuing to hit the road in 2022! In the United States, we’ll be live at Momentum and Texas Association of Broadcasters, just to name a few. If there’s an RCS feature or concept you’re investigating, don’t hesitate to reach out to your local RCS contact to setup a time to review your questions.
Also, don’t forget about Beta users! If you want to test out the latest and greatest RCS software, become a Beta user today! You’ll get access to these non-public builds and get to work with a personal RCS Support agent to review your thoughts on the Beta. Zetta 5.21.2, GSelector 5.0 and Aquira 3.21.2 are currently all open for new Beta users! A friendly reminder to check your backups and we’ll catch you next and every Thursday at 11am ET for another RCS Live!