RE: CCU

["Rob Walker" <rwalker@gccbend.com>]

Yes, things have to be consistant from station to station, not only for the
station recieving voice tracks, but also for those originating them. Imagine
for a moment, a jock at Kiss in Los Angeles talking up a song that had been
recorded localy, but sending his voice track to a station that didn't have
the same version of the song. It would be a train wreck EVERY time it was
tracked.

I'm going to really let that cat out of the bag, but I don't work for CC
anymore...and it's not really a big deal... The project to coordinate the
AM/FM Prophet cart numbers, from the now defunct "Star System", and the CC
cart numbers is what resulted in the "Unified Music Library", and is
administered by CC Music in Covington.

Here's a quick overview of how it works. Assume that a station is planning a
format change to, "MIX". The PD will contact Covington, talk to the Music
Guys and order a "snap server" of music library cuts to be sent to his
location. (The "Snap" is a raid array of mp2s, format specific.) The
engineering department loads ALL the cuts from the snap to the local prophet
server. Now, the local station has all of the library that they'll need to
put the format on the air. The PD (or Brand Manager) determines which cuts
get aired, but ALL of them are in the server. When this station wants to add
new currents, an email is sent to Music Services in Covington and the
requested songs are sent via the Wide Area Network to the local server. The
WAN is the link that makes the whole process work. Music, voice tracks,
production and text are able to be zipped around the company, from station
to station in "data packets". Music Services also handles the mapping of
station to station on the network.

Some of the newer CC acquistions are not on Prophet, and thus are not able
to take part in the WAN for instant data packet swapping and out of market
voice tracking, but most of those stations are slated for upgrades to
Prophet, most will get the new "NexGen" product.

As far as out of market talent, most CC stations use it at one point or
another. While a CC PD at KSD in St Louis, I VT'ed a  station in Marion
Ohio, while our sister Station, KLOU had nights VT'ed by John "Rock n Roll"
Anthony (who pulled a shift on the old WZOU in the 80's) and Dana Danniels,
the PD at KLOU VT'ed a station in West Virginia.

I was always afraid that if I put out of market VT's on my station to save
money in the short term, I'd never be able to justify a live body in that
slot again... so weekends were voice tracked by the full timers and a few
part time people pulled live shifts.

Hope that answers some questions.


Steve wrote:

Guess it kind of makes sense that things would have to be consistent.  Your
post kind of implies that some CC stations are not on Prophet.  True?  How
many of CC's stations use out of market v/t's?  Mostly small-to-midsize
markets I'd presume?


Rob Walker wrote:

>The "Unified Library" is an interesting thing... all of the CC stations
that
>use out of market voice tracks must have the EXACT same library, so the
>intro and outro markers and times match. So, all of the stations that are
on
>Prophet are issued a "unified library" with the exact same "cart numbers"
>and intro times.