Hi Centova

I wonder if it would be possible to allow Interval Playlists to interrupt Scheduled Playlists. We have a client who schedules each day with some tracks so every day has a different type of music. They would like to have an Interval Playlist but from my understanding Interval Playlists cannot interupt Scheduled playlists.

I wonder if Steve or another developer could clarify if this would be possible ?

Interval playlists currently can't interrupt scheduled playlists by design and in the current versions of Centova Cast this can't be changed.  This is because the original intent of scheduled playlists was for things like pre-recorded shows, countdowns, etc., all things that you wouldn't normally want to interrupt.

We've found that lots of clients are using scheduled playlists to control their standard day-to-day programming, though, so we're planning to introduce more flexibility in a future release.  It probably won't be v3.0 though as v3.0 is mainly focused on new features -- after it's out, we'll be going back to work on improving existing features like this.

Agree with the OP

I didn't realise Interval Playlists are disabled while running a Scheduled one. Ooopsie, my ads/trailers won't have been playing then.

Again, I wish Interval Playlists could also be assigned times/dates and Scheduled Playlists had the option to also run at intervals, and  i.e. the existing features of the two types of list combined into one type.  Why not?

Again, I wish Interval Playlists could also be assigned times/dates and Scheduled Playlists had the option to also run at intervals, and  i.e. the existing features of the two types of list combined into one type.  Why not?

For the same reason you don't wear your socks as mittens.  Sure, I'd bet you could knit yourself a killer sockmitten, but you're going to have a hell of a time getting your hands and feet in there at the same time.

Seriously, though, with all due respect, implementing this will have two results -- 1) it'll be a bitch for users to manage and 2) the timings are going to start conflicting with one-another.  Say we did this, and you set it up to run at 6pm Mon-Fri and every 10 songs.  Now, does it play every 10 songs on Sundays?  If so, what about the Mon-Fri restriction?  If not, why not -- it's all one playlist type, right?  What if the 10th song happens to come right before 6pm?  Do you play the playlist twice?  If not, do you play it just before 6pm to honor the 10-track requirement, or right at 6pm violating it?  etc.  It just doesn't make sense to do this.

Come to think of it, it doesn't make sense to me that people are using scheduled playlists for their day-to-day programming, either... that's what general rotation playlists are for.  And that's the original reason why interval playlists were designed not to override scheduled playlists -- general rotation playlists are supposed to be for day-to-day programming (with ads, station ident, etc.) and scheduled playlists were supposed to be for "special events" like countdowns and so-on which shouldn't be randomly interrupted with ads.

I wonder if perhaps the real problem here is a deficiency in the general rotation playlist type which is prompting folks to misuse scheduled playlists instead?  Anyone care to provide some feedback on that?  What functionality is it that you need that simply cannot be accomplished with GR playlists?  The only thing that springs to mind is the ability to restrict them to certain days of the week, and it would be trivial to add support for that to GR playlists... certainly much easier than reworking the playlist prioritization scheme to allow Interval playlists to override Scheduled playlists.

Any thoughts?

Again, I wish Interval Playlists could also be assigned times/dates and Scheduled Playlists had the option to also run at intervals, and  i.e. the existing features of the two types of list combined into one type.  Why not?

For the same reason you don't wear your socks as mittens.  Sure, I'd bet you could knit yourself a killer sockmitten, but you're going to have a hell of a time getting your hands and feet in there at the same time.

Seriously, though, with all due respect, implementing this will have two results -- 1) it'll be a bitch for users to manage

Why a bitch to manage?  What’s so complicated?  Anybody who doesn’t want to set time/date limits to an interval type event, needn’t, and, when they don’t want the interval function they simply set the times/dates and don’t enter any interval.

How much of a ‘bitch’ do you think your existing system is to use in a whole range of situations, for example, where an ad or programme trailer mustn't run every day nor all day, doesn't start yet and shouldn't run forever?  Or, the news needs to play on the hour, not every day.  I'd like to run the weather report at quater past and quater to the hour. A lot of people would like to run a "top of the hour" jingle on the hour (near as dammit, can't be exact obviously).

and 2) the timings are going to start conflicting with one-another.  

No they aren’t.  Date takes precedent, then day of the week, time boundaries, then intervals.   How else would you propose scheduling an ad to play every 30 minutes from Dec 7th until Xmas, Monday-Saturday only and 9am – 5pm only?  C’mon, How? It's a typical situation which happens everyday.

Show trailers – they usually have different versions saying ‘listen Sunday at 4’ / ’tomorrow at 4’ / ’today at 4” – how are we supposed to schedule those?  Keeping the software basic/simple doesn’t make our scheduling jobs easier but more complicated, if not impossible.

Say we did this, and you set it up to run at 6pm Mon-Fri and every 10 songs.  Now, does it play every 10 songs on Sundays?  If so, what about the Mon-Fri restriction?  If not, why not -- it's all one playlist type, right?  

Of course it doesn’t play on Sundays, that’s the whole point of setting day/date limits!!!  Perhaps spend some time at an ordinary radio station and see the hundreds of scheduling functions they use every day - well beyond the capabilities of Centova at the moment, but really not that complicated if your guys can open their minds a bit.

What if the 10th song happens to come right before 6pm? If not, do you play it just before 6pm to honor the 10-track requirement, or right at 6pm violating it? etc. It just doesn't make sense to do this.

Simple - if the ad/promo has a start time which would be after 6pm then it doesn’t play – it’s outside the time limits set for it.  Incidentally, nobody in the real world (e.g. advertisers) cares about the number of songs between ads/promos/idents, it’s really the time/frequency that is important.

Do you play the playlist twice?

Why would you do that?  Confused.  If someones playlist is too short it's their problem.

Come to think of it, it doesn't make sense to me that people are using scheduled playlists for their day-to-day programming, either... that's what general rotation playlists are for.

..because the General Rotation playlists have no scheduling function (other than time of day)!  

Seriously, consider ditching all the different playlist types and make all the functions of the General/Scheduled/Interval (and indeed Immediate) playlists available in one – it’d be far more versatile for users and no more complicated. It'd be brilliant, I could get my job done.

and scheduled playlists were supposed to be for "special events" like countdowns and so-on which shouldn't be randomly interrupted with ads.

Why on Earth did the developer think commercials, news and idents would stop during a scheduled show?  That’s nuts.  Forget how things were “supposed” to be used, the real world isn’t as simplistic as the specific model the programmer originally had in mind here. The tail doesn't wag the dog.

What functionality is it that you need that simply cannot be accomplished with GR playlists? The only thing that springs to mind is the ability to restrict them to certain days of the week,

..and also restrict items to play between certain dates (so I don’t have to get up during the night to start and stop each client’s ad campaign)
AND play at certain intervals (think ads) or with specific start times (think news/sport/weather reports).  Remember, if we can't predict when, for example, the sport report is going to be, then we can't promote it either.

Any thoughts?

Finally, in the real world, stations like to cluster ads together in ad breaks.  If Centova is to someday be a serious application then that needs thinking about too.  Not forgetting that similar client types can't have their ads together in the same break (e.g. 4  motor dealers in a break).

Anyway, back to my knitting...

No they aren’t.  Date takes precedent, then day of the week, time boundaries, then intervals.   How else would you propose scheduling an ad to play every 30 minutes from Dec 7th until Xmas, Monday-Saturday only and 9am – 5pm only?  C’mon, How? It's a typical situation which happens everyday.

Ah, when you said "combine them" I thought you meant you wanted to setup a single playlist type which runs on multiple different schedules, which was why I was a bit puzzled.

But yes, adding scheduled-playlist-style time settings to the other playlist types makes sense and we'll definitely consider that, and that may justify removing the scheduled playlist type.

Seriously, consider ditching all the different playlist types

Think about how GR playlists work in terms of weighting and selecting tracks from multiple playlists, then compare that to an exclusive scheduled playlist.  Differences like that make it impractical to fully combine the playlist types, short of having toggles for those differences.  And having toggles for those differences is fundamentally no different than having multiple playlist types, which is why I'm not interested in arguing this point with you any further.

Why on Earth did the developer think commercials, news and idents would stop during a scheduled show?

Nobody said they'd stop.  When doing prepared shows, you'd typically want to manually control where your ads/ident are inserted... unless of course you're using a scheduled playlist where a GR playlist was intended to be used.

You've commented over and over in your posts on how the "real world" works.  Consider what happens when you have an hour-long interview that's broken down into a series of arbitrary-length MP3 files, a very common real-world scenario.  Now consider what happens when your autoDJ starts randomly inserting commercials in between those tracks -- in mid-sentence, for example.  To answer your question, that's why.

BTW, your general attitude in a lot of your posts seems to be "I'm unequivocally right and you're an idiot if you don't share my point of view", which is why I've skipped large portions of this and other posts you've made.  We're happy to consider client suggestions, but please bear in mind that just because YOU expect something to work one way doesn't mean there's no justification for the alternative.