voicetracking question

[Deleted]

For those in radio, you may be able to answer this question for me. For DJ's either nationally or local who voicetrack for times they aren't live in the studio, can they be so specific they give the current time as in they know when their tracks will be heard to the minute? Do they go over the song list that was aired in between their tracks? Or are they more generic in their wording?

[BrettVW]

Paul,

At least the way it works with our stations, we do in fact list all of the music, as well as intro/outro the songs as they play. In fact, the way our voicetracking works (we use Maestro automation) we actually hear the intros and outros of our songs as we voicetrack.

As for giving an exact time, it is not something that we are able to do, nor is it something I would think most stations could do. Unlike television, a programming hour does not begin at the exact top of the hour. Often times it will happen a few minutes before or after the official start of the hour. (which is why sometimes a 9am Casey start time may actually be 8:56 or 9:04) Our automation schedules so many minutes of music per hour, but depending on how long the jock talks (in either a live or voicetracked situations), the commercial load, and the lengths of all the jingles and sweepers put together, we often need to drop one or two songs out of our hours. When the jock is live, we simply drop it, but when we are running unmanned, the computer has a command to drop certain songs in order to keep the hours running on time. The only time you get into trouble here is the rare case when an hour runs short and we have to add music, which the computer can not do.

However, back to the point, we are unable to tell exactly what minute each voicetrack file will play, since it is impossible to predict the timing of each hour. But in order to keep it sounding live, I will simply usually say something like "all this and more coming up as we head into the 8:00 hour here on..." Of course...giving out the phone number and asking for requests is also a trick we use to make voicetracked hours seem live.... as if we are allowed to play requests when we are live anyway

[Deleted]

Thanks for answering, now I can know pretty much whether a DJ is there or not.

Do you leave the phone off the hook to make it seem like you are there? ;D

[MEF]

I have a question.

So, if the last segment of an hour of AT10/20 that is programmed into the computer, doesn't start before the end of the hour, the computer will most likely drop the last segment?

[BrettVW]

Not the way our automation works because we don't put the drop commands in during AT20 and Backtrax USA. The timing can get 20 minutes over and it wont affect the shows at all. However, some stations may use drop commands for the optional segments (and it would in fact be possible to have it drop the 3rd hour optional segment without dropping the # 2/ # 1 segment).