MusicMaster Blog
Holiday music, turnover analysis, and autoburn posted on November 19th, 2018
By Brian Wheeler
If you’re like most programmers you’re getting ready to dust off the holiday music for another season. Some of you may be playing holiday music already!
There are lots of pitfalls that can occur when reintroducing holiday music to your programming. Do I have enough music? Are there elements in the clocks I no longer use? Do I need to put in new programs I didn’t run in past years?
With all the other things you’re trying to remember for the holiday season, you may forget to see how those holiday music categories are rotating. Holiday music can burn easily. You don’t want to add to the burn by having bad rotations. To make matters worse, many stations gradually ramp up their holiday music which CHANGES the rotations on these holiday categories with each increase of usage in their clocks. Are you checking those rotations to make sure you’re not stacking up? What can be done to compensate for a poorly rotating holiday category?
The turnover analysis screen can give you some great insight as to how these categories are plotting out as the holiday season advances. If you do run into a rotation that plots the same songs in the same hours or dayparts, like this:
An “autoburn”, which can be described a simulated play, can be put into place to alter an otherwise redundant or “stacking rotation”. In this case, we ‘burned’ one song at midnight each overnight to force an otherwise mathematically redundant rotation into a more ‘stair-stepped’ rotation that moves your music through the dayparts over time.
The result is better coverage from day to day and less chance of premature burn with your audience.
Autoburn can be the fix you need to get those holiday songs moving through the different hours and dayparts again when changing the clocks or changing the category size is not a possibility.
As always, if you have questions don’t hesitate to ask your Music Scheduling Consultant. Happy Holidays!