I was driving the Wellington Citroen 2CV back to the Dungeon recently and was listening to a local radio broadcast on the in-car wireless.
This is something that I have always wanted to know, and knowing that some of my friends here at the TV Forum are involved in radio maybe able to tell me..
Do radio stations play their music using MP3 or similar files nowadays? Do they still use legacy formats like CD or vinyl at all?
How do radio stations do jingles? I seem to remember watching an analogue broadcast where they were recorded onto a cartridge. Is this the case today?
CDs are still used generally in the bigger stations, however, those who are part of smaller groups or serve just individual towns use computer playout allowing them to pre-record links and the songs are MP3.
There's much more to it, of course, I just cover playout in a nutshell here. Best place to head is DigitalSpy who could tell you more.
Most stations nowadays rely on computers for all their output. The most recent station I worked at recently had all their songs on one server, and jingles, promos & ads on another.
On the computer screen there was a playout system called Myriad, it's very much a case of simply clicking on the item you want to play next.
These systems are very good at automation for overnights and can backtime the songs so it can automatically opt-in to the national news on the hour which is delivered via satellite.
Most stations nowadays rely on computers for all their output. The most recent station I worked at recently had all their songs on one server, and jingles, promos & ads on another.
On the computer screen there was a playout system called Myriad, it's very much a case of simply clicking on the item you want to play next.
These systems are very good at automation for overnights and can backtime the songs so it can automatically opt-in to the national news on the hour which is delivered via satellite.
Most stations nowadays rely on computers for all their output. The most recent station I worked at recently had all their songs on one server, and jingles, promos & ads on another.
On the computer screen there was a playout system called Myriad, it's very much a case of simply clicking on the item you want to play next.
These systems are very good at automation for overnights and can backtime the songs so it can automatically opt-in to the national news on the hour which is delivered via satellite.
Basically to keep the audience and radio authority happy. I'm sure if the stations could get away with it, they would have everyone's shows pre-recorded, but then you lose loads of interactivity like live callers, competitions etc.
It's far cheaper to pay a presenter to record a weeks worth of shows in just a couple of hours. It's not very good for the presenters bank balance, but it keeps the radio station auditers happy.
I was driving the Wellington Citroen 2CV back to the Dungeon recently and was listening to a local radio broadcast on the in-car wireless.
This is something that I have always wanted to know, and knowing that some of my friends here at the TV Forum are involved in radio maybe able to tell me..
Do radio stations play their music using MP3 or similar files nowadays? Do they still use legacy formats like CD or vinyl at all?
How do radio stations do jingles? I seem to remember watching an analogue broadcast where they were recorded onto a cartridge. Is this the case today?
Why do you feel you have to write in this ridiculous "old person" style - it's pointless.
To answer your question, most BBC local radio stations now use Radioman, which uses MP3 at its core.
Previously, some used Dalet which is MP2 core - 6 Music still does use that.
RCS Selector, which plenty of commercial stations use, I believe is also MP3 core - but I'm willing to be proved wrong here.
I've used enco-dad in radio studio's which is a very good system, and excellent for automation. All the station's files were on two independant servers, one on site and one off site, connected via ISDN (should either fail, one could kick in and keep the music going), and saved as WMA's. All the jingles and ads were kept on the same servers, but in a seperate section of the servers so that the commercial team could edit and update without bothering the flow of music. Enco-dad is timed down to the millisecond.
I've used enco-dad in radio studio's which is a very good system, and excellent for automation. All the station's files were on two independant servers, one on site and one off site, connected via ISDN (should either fail, one could kick in and keep the music going), and saved as WMA's. All the jingles and ads were kept on the same servers, but in a seperate section of the servers so that the commercial team could edit and update without bothering the flow of music. Enco-dad is timed down to the millisecond.
Yes this is pretty much the way things are at The Bear. Dad Enco is pretty stable too with very little hiccups!
