MusicMaster Blog

As the holiday feasts begin, here are a few choice leftovers (holiday related and otherwise) from our blog vault to help you prepare for the “most wonderful time of the year” in your MusicMaster databases!

1. Here’s our first tasty, albeit rewarmed holiday treats for you…A couple of great general checklists that Music Scheduling Consultant Marianne Burkett created to help you plan for your holiday programming! Get ready for the holidays and “Holiday Prep Time”.
2. Maybe you had a format flip this year, or created a database from scratch and have a need to copy all those holiday chestnuts from one database to another. Here is how to do it.
3. Did you know you can make customized Title keyword separations? Because no one needs to hear the only two versions you have in your database of “Feliz Navidad” within the same shift, right?
4. Thinking that this year you want to packet together those tertiary versions of “Jingle Bells” or all of the novelty songs together, and have never set up packets before? Well, read on about your options for packeting in MusicMaster.
5. Everyone has their own ideas, methods and numbers on how/when they start spiking in the holiday tunes. What is an easy way to get them into your regular rotation clocks, without having to modify the “master clocks”? Just copy em’!
6. Here’s a wonderful gift from the software programming elves, it’s the fast way to change out specified element types in bulk within your MusicMaster clocks: All about the Clock Mass Changer.
7. You’ve created your special holiday clocks already, and you’ve put them on Assignment Grids… Now wouldn’t it be perfect this year if you didn’t have to think about manually making those grid adjustments in the midst of all of the other seasonal madness? Remember that one time you forgot? Why not deploy the Format Scheduler this year?
8. So you’ve created a perfect block of Christmas Eve/Christmas morning programming, and you’d like to repurpose it either for the next day, or perhaps you just want to have it repeat over and over in four hourly segments. Do that with the clone hour’s functionality!
9. Planning on and end of the year countdown special, and haven’t a clue how to get started and create it within MusicMaster? We’ve covered it here, and here.
10. We would love to hear about your special holiday programming ideas, and if you have questions about how to translate that engaging content into your MusicMaster database, reach out to your Music Scheduling Consultant for assistance. Happy Holidays from all of us at MusicMaster!

By Jesus Rodriguez

You may already have a holiday grid ready to go for the winter break. You may possibly even have clocks that flip your station to an all Christmas channel 24/7. Those concepts are great tools to have so that you’re prepared for the holiday season every year. (more…)

By Marianne Burkett

Why wait until the last minute to be ready?

It’s never too early to prepare for Winter Holiday scheduling!

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by Paul Ziino

You can predetermine what clocks or assignment grids you wish to use on certain days.  For example, you want to use your “All Christmas” grid on Christmas Eve and Day.  Instead of having to remember on December 23^rd to switch your grid before scheduling the 24^th and 25^th, then change it back prior to running the 26^th, you could use the Format Scheduler to do it for you.

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By Marianne Burkett

The holidays are approaching fast, so here’s a summary of the things you need to be thinking about as you get ready to add Christmas music to your rotations. (more…)

By Marianne Burkett

What is the “Format Scheduler”?

In a nutshell, the Format Scheduler allows you to pre-schedule your Clocks and Assignment Grids in advance on a calendar.  You can also “rotate” your Assignment Grids.

The Format Scheduler gives you the ability to “override” your active assigned clocks for a pre- determined time frame for a date range, or perhaps for just one hour on a particular day. Just what you need if you would like to have different clocks in place for the holiday Monday coming up (perhaps you have a specialty weekend or count down planned, or simply will be voice tracked Monday) and need to have those clocks in place to export to your automation system.

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