What's Lurking In Your Breaknotes?
Written May. 8, 2008 by Sean Ross in Content + Internet Radio with 3 Comments
Every now and then, I caution broadcasters about those breaknotes that sync directly to the "now playing" display on your Website or streaming audio player and often give more information about the internal workings of the station than you might wish listeners to have.
Here's a new one from a very successful station in a top 75 market:
Under the "Artist" field: "Voice Tracker";
Under the "Title" field: "Live Jock."
In other words, there was a live jock on at the time (and it certainly sounded that way), but there were obviously provisions for when there weren't that included letting everybody know about it -- which is a little more oversharing than merely showing listeners that you are playing "Music Image Promo #7."
Have any programmers/Website managers noticed this on their own stations? Is this an easy fix? Or is it one of those onerous things that PDs are aware of, but live with because it's not an easy fix.
Reader Comments
Your 2¢, in chronological order — add your comment below.
Yes, it's probably an easy fix, but it probably depends on the automation system. In AudioVault, you just designate which categories of audio you want to transmit the "now playing" info for. In our case, we just use "now playing" for all the music categories. Everything else gets a generic "KiiM-FM 99.5" - commercials, imaging, voicetrack placeholders, etc.
What's a bummer is that with syndicated shows like a countdown, since there are many songs in the same audio segment, you can't use the "Now Playing" for song titles. You could, however, have the now playing say "Now Playing: The Foxworthy Countdown," which is what we do.
Buzz @ KIIM
Tucson, AZ
Best one I've ever seen. The Artist name was "(blank) in the Morning". The title was, in all-caps no less, "BE RELEVANT". This came up about three times an hour. Not sure who I feel worse for, the morning show or the PD.
Even if your automation system can't do it, is should be an easy enough fix. Some piece of software is getting the data from your automation system to the stream or onto the website. Most likely this is custom software so it will be easy to get whomever created it back in and make them filter it at that stage, likely there is more than enough information to distinguish between songs and stuff you don't want people to see.