[BC] Re: Does your PD program your auomation system?

[Tom Taggart]

 I did the initial programing to get the system running. The ops mgr/ pd (more the former, we run satellite)took over once he learned the system and now does most of the day to day changes.

We only have two full time people for two stations. The Traffic/Office Manager inputs everything into NaturalLog and keeps her mother-in-law the sales manager organized.  She exports the daily logs into the Simian systems for the two stations. 

The evening fellow arrives from his college classes late afternoon and checks for any anomalies, or problem like late copy that needs to be produced and inserted. Also checks with the network's website for DJ changes so that the right liners go with each DJ the next day.  He also does the weekend programing (when we usually go nuts with remotes and NASCAR), which requires rearranging the log to get all th spots in and make it easy on the part-timers running the board.

The ops manager is there early in the morning and reviews each break to correct for Natural Log idiocies (when we get busy it will start doing strange things like loading the same spot twice in a 3 minute stop set. Also likes to jam everything into one stopset in an hour, then dump psa's in the other breaks.)  Most of the "programing" is really "gardening." That is, making the breaks sound pretty after Natural Log does its random dump of spots into each stopset by keeping adjacent voices apart and changing how the 30's and 60's are spaced in the break.

Once the system is set-up most of the interaction with the system is this formatic tweaking to make sure everything flows right. It's a question of balance: Do you set the parameters on the logging program so tight that traffic ends up programing the station in order to get a log to run; or do you let the prgraming people handle these details?
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