Broadcast automation

Broadcast automation is the use of technology to automate broadcasting operations. Used either at a station or a network, it is used to run a facility in the absence of a human operator. They can also run in a "live assist" when there are on-air personnel present at the broadcast studio or control room.

The radio transmitter end of the airchain is handled by a separate automatic transmission system (ATS).

History

Originally, many (if not most) broadcast licensing authorities required a licensed operator to run every station at all times, meaning that every DJ had to pass an exam to obtain a license to be on-air, if their duties also required them to ensure proper operation of the transmitter. This was often the case on overnight and weekend shifts when there was no broadcast engineer present, and all of the time for small stations with only a contract engineer on call.

In the U.S., it was also necessary to have an operator on duty at all times in case the Emergency Broadcast System was used, as this had to be heard and triggered manually. While there was (and still is) no requirement to relay any other warnings, any mandatory messages from the U.S. president would have had to be first validated with a code word sealed in a pink envelope sent annually to stations by the FCC.

Gradually, the quality and reliability of electronic equipment improved, regulations were relaxed, and no operator had to be present (or at least available) while a station was operating. In the U.S., this came about when EAS replaced EBS. This led a slow march toward automation, to help supplement (and now in many cases supplant) the live on-air talent.

Early analog systems

Early automation systems were electromechanical systems which used relays. Later ones were "computerized" only to the point of maintaining a schedule, and were limited to radio rather than TV.

Music would be stored on reel-to-reel audio tape. Subaudible tones on the tape marked the end of each song. The computer would simply rotate among the tape players until the computer's internal clock matched that of a scheduled event.

When a scheduled event would be encountered, the computer would finish the currently-playing song and then execute the scheduled block of events. These events were usually advertisements, but could also include the station's top-of-hour legal ID or news, or a bumper for promoting the station or its other shows. At the end of the block, the rotation among tapes resumed.

Advertisements, jingles and the top of hour legal ID were often on "carts". Short for "cart"ridges, these were endless like 8-track tapes, and looked nearly identical as well. Mechanical carousels would rotate the carts in and out of multiple tape players as dictated by the computer. Time announcements were provided by a pair of dedicated cart players, with the even minutes stored on one and the odd minutes on the other. This way an announcement was always ready to go, even if the minute was changing when the announcement was triggered.

This system did require attention throughout the day to change reels as they ran out, and to reload ad carts. Nearing the obsolescence of this type of system, a method was developed to automatically rewind and re-cue the reel tapes when they ran out. This extended 'walk-away' time indefinitely.

A different technology comes in 1980 with the analog recorders made by Solidyne, that used an advanced computer-controlled tape positioning system. Four GMS 204 units were controlled from a 6809 microprocessor, with the program stored in a solid-state plug-in memory module. This system has a limited programming time of about eight hours.

Satellite programming often used audible DTMF tones to trigger events at affiliate stations. This allowed the automatic local insertion of ads and IDs. Because there are 12 (or 16) tone pairs, and typically four tones were sent in rapid succession (less than one second), several specific events could be triggered, rather than the few that subaudible tones (usually 25Hz and 35Hz) could.

Modern digital systems

Modern systems typically run on hard disk, where all of the music, jingles, radio advertisements, voice tracks, and other announcements are stored. These audio files may be either compressed or uncompressed, or often with only minimal compression as a compromise. For radio, these disks are usually in personal computers, sometimes running their own custom operating systems, but more often running as an application in a stable OS like Windows NT or later. Earlier text versions ran on MS-DOS, which was also quite stable due to its simplicity. At least one current package runs on BeOS. [http://www.tunetrackersystems.com/ttbasic.html]

Scheduling was an important advance of these systems, allowing for exact timing. Some systems use GPS satellite receivers to obtain exact atomic time, for perfect synchronization with satellite-delivered programming. Reasonably-accurate timekeeping can also be obtained with the use of Internet protocols like Network Time Protocol.

Automation systems are also now more interactive than ever with digital audio mixing consoles, and can even record from a telephone hybrid to play back an edited conversation with a telephone caller. This is part of a system's live-assist mode.

The simplest arrangements can even be done on software as basic as Winamp, often with software plugins designed specifically for this purpose.

There is also a trend in radio to use voice-tracking. Also called "cyber-jock" and referred to sometimes colloquially as a "robojock", is a technique employed by some radio stations to produce the illusion of a live disc jockey or announcer sitting in the studios of the station when one is not actually present. A great number of Internet radio and variety hits stations use automation software and voice-tracking to completely replace live on-air talent. Stations can even be voice-tracked from another city far away, now often using Internet delivery of sound files. In the U.S., this is a common and controversial practice for making radio more generic and "staged". Having local content ("live and local") is also touted as a way for terrestrial stations to compete with satellite radio, where there may be no radio personality on the air at all.

A commercially-available, for-sale product named Audicom was introduced by Oscar Bonello in 1989 [http://www.lanacion.com.ar/Archivo/Nota.asp?nota_id=187775 LA NACION newspaper article about development of bit compression technology, Buenos Aires, February 5th, 2001] ] . It is based on psychoacoustic lossy compression, the same principle being used in most modern lossy audio encoders (MP3, AAC,...), and it allowed both broadcast automation and recording to hard drives. [http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=2384 New Improvements in Audio Signal Processing for AM Broadcasting by Bonello, Oscar] ] [http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=6674 PC-Controlled Psychoacoustic Audio Processor by Bonello, Oscar Juan] ]

Television

In television, automated playout also is becoming more practical with ever-larger hard drives, with TV shows and TV commercials as well as digital on-screen graphics all being controlled by computer. These systems can be very extensive, tied-in with parts that allow the "ingestion" (as it is called in the industry) of video from satellite networks and from electronic news gathering operations, and the asset management of the video library, including archival of footage for later use. In ATSC, PCMP is then used to pass information about the video through the airchain to PSIP, which transmits the current electronic program guide information over digital television to the viewer.

References

ee also

* Audicom
* Campcaster
* [http://www.paravelsystems.com/ Rivendell]
* [http://www.hardata.com/ Hardata]