[BC] New automation system question

[Glen Kippel]

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 7:17 AM, Mike McCarthy <Towers at mre.com> wrote:


> My question is simply....is there a system out there with the ability to
> handle live feeds and recorded cuts in the same manner. They would program
> through the traffic system (the station uses Marketron)  any source which is
> actually programmed as hard timed duration cuts. These would be elements
> such as recorded news or live news from Studio N at 1:30 in duration,
> weather at 0:20, traffic at 0:30.  Each element would need music beds and
> have the ability to trigger cue lamps in the studio at the start as well as
> at the end.  Similar to the old tertiary tone on carts warning the time
> allocation is nearly complete.
>
> I've looked at a couple systems which can do anything we want with
> recorded cuts.  But handling live feeds is simply another story. They simply
> fall apart when trying to do anything sophisticated with live feeds.  Most
> notably, they can't be timed and can't be called up in traffic.  It requires
> a second program, like Selector or Music Master to call up the feeds. And
> even then no timed feeds permitted.
>
> So...that said folks...what's out there.  Go ahead and eliminate Dalet,
> Mediatouch, and AV.  We have no desire to pay licensing fees to the music
> programming people as this is a voice only station.
>
> -------------


I suppose Google could fix you up, but just how much are you willing to
pay?  And I don't see what Dalet, iMediaTouch, or AudioVault have to do with
music licensing fees.  Are they collecting for ASCAP, BMI and SESAC now?
Having had quite a bit of experience with DigiLink, I would say that it
would do what you want -- you may need an external box to convert ASCII
strings to contact closures to turn your cue lights on and off, or if you
can tolerate a second of silence, program in 1 second of an otherwise
unused source input, using the associated contact closure to do the job.
The good thing is: you can send them $100, they send you the stuff, you try
it out for a month, and if you don't like it you can send it back.  That's
really pretty painless.  That beats being stuck with something you can't
use, like the (name deleted) system that I tried once.