Anybody here have experience in radio programming?

[CrowsofFritz]

So it's easy for me to record, mix and produce a show. I've done so many times actually. Both for local radio shows, and college stations.


But I don't know what programming is, and I'm going to train for my college station.


What does a programmer do? I heard it requires skill involving equipment.

 

[gecko zzed]

Most radio stations these days use an application to schedule advertisements, programs and music. Our community radio uses a free software application called Zara.

Broadly speaking, there are two types of programming; micro and macro.

With micro programming, you load up promos, ads, songs and other material to broadcast, put them in the order you want, then save it as a playlist.

With macro programming, you schedule these playlists into a broadcasting timetable. You also select and include feeds from other services (e.g. a news service), and allow for live-to-air broadcasting.

 

[CrowsofFritz]

Cool! Thanks for the reply Gecko!


I'm going to assume that I'll be doing micro programming. I think the macro is handled by a professor.

 

[gecko zzed]

I'm going to assume that I'll be doing micro programming.

That's exactly what I do. I run a weekly radio program that promotes local music. Before the program is due to go to air, I go down to the station, upload material I want to play onto the station's network. I then bring up Zara and insert the program promo, other promos, various scheduled sponsorship announcements, and the tracks I want to play (all of which are stored on the network) I also add in the stops where I want to say stuff.. All this is saved as a program playlist.

Just before I go to air, I drag this playlist into the on-air schedule, and hit play at the appointed time, and off I go.

 

[CrowsofFritz]

So I have done 2 days of training. I'll probably be doing some actual programming on the 4th day. With the supervision of someone else of course.

This is a lot to take in. We don't use Zara. But I'm doing exactly as you described gecko. Just pretty much insert ads, promos, weather and the appropriate shows. Don't even have to wait to hit play. Once I got everything in schedule, I just leave. It is probably a 30 minute task. The person training me says 20, but he's been going at this for a while.

 

[gecko zzed]

There's no talking through it?

In that case, it should be not too hard a task.

The actual work in setting up a program takes very little time.

What does take me a lot of time is figuring out what tracks I'm going to play, and in what order. That's mainly because I like to have a logical sequence that I can talk to during the show.

 

[CrowsofFritz]

No, I'm not doing any talking.

Just sorta like setting up a schedule.

I don't really have much to think about in what I play. I just have to put the right show in the time slot, and then I can add any random advertisement I want.