MusicMaster Blog

by Jerry Butler

If you are like most programmers, you wear yourself out getting ready for the holiday. Sure, you may get some time off, but you burn the candle at both ends getting ready for that break. MusicMaster is here to help you get ready for your next holiday.

Many stations run specialty imaging for holidays or seasons. Do you currently go through and manually schedule or run through tons of liners changing start and end dates to make it happen? MusicMaster makes it easy to change those elements quickly. Here are the steps to set up imaging elements using session filters.

I recommend organizing your seasonal elements into two categories. First, have a category for generic imaging, and second, create another for specific seasonal or holiday imaging. This could include imaging for individual holidays like Labor Day, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, or seasonal themes like Summer or Winter. Utilize a keyword field such as “Theme,” with generic imaging labeled as “generic” and seasonal or holiday imaging specified with the season or holiday. Once these categories are set up, proceed to the next step.

Open your clock where you insert your seasonal imaging. Create a combo position in your clock, prioritizing generic liners first, followed by holiday or seasonal liners. Click on the properties tab and select the “Apply Session Filters 1” box. If you’re using session filters for other events, assign a different session filter for this purpose. Save your clock, and now your session filter is active for that position.

Next, activate the rule for the session filter. Navigate to your rule tree and select the appropriate session filter from the right. Drag it over to either the “All Categories Unbreakable” folder or place the rule in each of the individual categories’ unbreakable folders. If you’re bypassing these imaging categories in your “All Category” rules, place the session filter rule in the individual categories for it to be honored. Once the rules are in place, save your rules.

Now you’re ready to schedule. Open your automatic scheduler window, navigate to the filter tab, and ensure the appropriate session filter is selected from the dropdown menu. In this example, we’re using session filter 1. Since we’ve coded our seasonal liners within the “Theme” field, select “Theme” and choose the specific theme, like Memorial Day. Once set, you can run your automatic scheduler.

Anywhere you’ve set session filter 1, it will look for the Memorial Day theme to schedule. It skips the generic category because everything there is coded as generic under the “Theme” field. Then, it moves to the seasonal category, skipping any imaging that doesn’t match the Memorial Day theme. It’s that straightforward. Just code your imaging under the appropriate theme and use the corresponding filter when scheduling for that holiday or season.

To revert to your generic liners, you can either click “Clear All Filters” in the filter tab of the automatic scheduler or select “generic” to schedule only liners coded as generic. If you clear all filters, it essentially ignores the filter and schedules normally. As long as your generic category is scheduled before your holiday or seasonal category in your pass order, everything should run smoothly. You can verify this by checking the schedule order under “Dataset,” “Schedule,” and “Schedule Properties.”

These enhancements should help streamline the process of scheduling your seasonal or holiday imaging. Contact your MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant with any questions.

Happy Scheduling… and enjoy your next holiday.

By Dave Tyler

We have all been there. After years of programming a station, the decision has been made that you are flipping formats, stunting a format change, or perhaps you are about to enter the Christmas season and really, really don’t want to have to create all brand-new clocks just for 4-5 weeks of programming. Or perhaps you just want to make changes to the clock that won’t go into effect for a couple of weeks and want to work on them without messing with the current grid.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could copy the current assignment grid and clocks into a new assignment grid populated with newly named clocks that are clones of your current clocks? You could then make adjustments in these clocks and this grid without messing around with your current working clocks and grid. With MusicMaster you can!

It is important to note before moving forward that you can also “Clone” your current database if you were flipping formats and have a safe “Sandbox” version to make your changes in until you are ready to go live. (Here is a link to an article I wrote on that: https://musicmaster.com/?p=6780). Or, you can use the Format Scheduler as another lane to plan ahead for holiday or specialty programming days. For more on using the Format Scheduler, check out this top-notch blog by Senior Technical Support Manager Paul Ziino: https://musicmaster.com/?p=757 .

In my example today, to keep things as straightforward and easy to understand as possible, I will be copying my grid so I can program my Christmas music. But keep in mind, there are multiple reasons why you might want to do this. In my example below, you can see my Christmas categories and my current grid using my normal categories for regular programming.

There are 14 unique clocks in this grid that I use on a weekly basis for my regular scheduling. If I start making changes that will only be used temporarily, then I will need to note those changes, so I don’t miss anything when I return to regular scheduling. In my opinion, this is like laying landmines for myself. I don’t know about you, but when I’m falling asleep, I have some of my best ideas as my mind relaxes. I have learned that 99% of the time when I convince myself I will remember this earth-shaking idea in the morning, I completely forget it. I used to keep a pad of paper by the bed, but now I just speak the idea into “Memos” on my phone. So, the idea that I will either recall the changes or even remember where I put my notes on the changes is a risk I am not comfortable with.

So, I have decided in this case I would love to copy the entire grid to a new grid that I can work on. But hold on a second, I would still need to make new clock names right? Yep, but MusicMaster has that handled. After clicking on my Clock icon on the toolbar to pull up my Format Clock Maintenance window, I can choose to “Copy” my assignment grid. Because I also need new clocks, I can check that box too. But wait there’s more!!!! I can choose a character I would like these new clocks to be prefaced with. In my example, I am using the letter “X” for all my Christmas clocks.

Look what happens when I click OK.

I have a new Christmas grid filled with the same clocks as my regular grid, but I can now adjust and manipulate them for my new/upcoming programming needs. I can double-click on a clock and begin making the necessary changes, and once complete, I can make this grid active when needed and hit the ground running.

There are a lot of reasons why you may find this a useful tool. I find that because I use lognotes and time syncs and special elements in my database, recreating those for a full grid can not only be exhausting, but it is easy to miss something. If I know my grid is solid and works well week in and week out, then that is some solid footing to use as my foundation for adding changes.

I realize some of you may have a huge amount of clocks, and you might not even know if you need them all. Doing some housekeeping on clocks and grids can be a great move too, and I would advise checking out this incredibly complete blog on how to do that written by my colleague Vicky James: https://musicmaster.com/?p=8665 .

As always, if you have any questions, MusicMaster support is here to help.

As the holiday feasts begin, here are a few choice leftovers (holiday related and otherwise) from our blog vault to help you prepare for the “most wonderful time of the year” in your MusicMaster databases!

1. Here’s our first tasty, albeit rewarmed holiday treats for you…A couple of great general checklists that Music Scheduling Consultant Marianne Burkett created to help you plan for your holiday programming! Get ready for the holidays and “Holiday Prep Time”.
2. Maybe you had a format flip this year, or created a database from scratch and have a need to copy all those holiday chestnuts from one database to another. Here is how to do it.
3. Did you know you can make customized Title keyword separations? Because no one needs to hear the only two versions you have in your database of “Feliz Navidad” within the same shift, right?
4. Thinking that this year you want to packet together those tertiary versions of “Jingle Bells” or all of the novelty songs together, and have never set up packets before? Well, read on about your options for packeting in MusicMaster.
5. Everyone has their own ideas, methods and numbers on how/when they start spiking in the holiday tunes. What is an easy way to get them into your regular rotation clocks, without having to modify the “master clocks”? Just copy em’!
6. Here’s a wonderful gift from the software programming elves, it’s the fast way to change out specified element types in bulk within your MusicMaster clocks: All about the Clock Mass Changer.
7. You’ve created your special holiday clocks already, and you’ve put them on Assignment Grids… Now wouldn’t it be perfect this year if you didn’t have to think about manually making those grid adjustments in the midst of all of the other seasonal madness? Remember that one time you forgot? Why not deploy the Format Scheduler this year?
8. So you’ve created a perfect block of Christmas Eve/Christmas morning programming, and you’d like to repurpose it either for the next day, or perhaps you just want to have it repeat over and over in four hourly segments. Do that with the clone hour’s functionality!
9. Planning on and end of the year countdown special, and haven’t a clue how to get started and create it within MusicMaster? We’ve covered it here, and here.
10. We would love to hear about your special holiday programming ideas, and if you have questions about how to translate that engaging content into your MusicMaster database, reach out to your Music Scheduling Consultant for assistance. Happy Holidays from all of us at MusicMaster!

By Jesus Rodriguez

You may already have a holiday grid ready to go for the winter break. You may possibly even have clocks that flip your station to an all Christmas channel 24/7. Those concepts are great tools to have so that you’re prepared for the holiday season every year. (more…)

By Marianne Burkett

Why wait until the last minute to be ready?

It’s never too early to prepare for Winter Holiday scheduling!

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by Paul Ziino

You can predetermine what clocks or assignment grids you wish to use on certain days.  For example, you want to use your “All Christmas” grid on Christmas Eve and Day.  Instead of having to remember on December 23^rd to switch your grid before scheduling the 24^th and 25^th, then change it back prior to running the 26^th, you could use the Format Scheduler to do it for you.

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By Marianne Burkett

The holidays are approaching fast, so here’s a summary of the things you need to be thinking about as you get ready to add Christmas music to your rotations. (more…)

By Marianne Burkett

What is the “Format Scheduler”?

In a nutshell, the Format Scheduler allows you to pre-schedule your Clocks and Assignment Grids in advance on a calendar.  You can also “rotate” your Assignment Grids.

The Format Scheduler gives you the ability to “override” your active assigned clocks for a pre- determined time frame for a date range, or perhaps for just one hour on a particular day. Just what you need if you would like to have different clocks in place for the holiday Monday coming up (perhaps you have a specialty weekend or count down planned, or simply will be voice tracked Monday) and need to have those clocks in place to export to your automation system.

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