SCA has begun an experiment in Adelaide that puts its live local breakfast show on each of its DAB+ stations in that city.
As of this morning, Hit 107 breakfast hosts Bec and Cosi are now being heard on all of Adelaide’s Hit Network DAB+ stations, using playout technology to sync the talk breaks with the different playlists of each station.
The Hit DAB+ stations previously carried automated music.
The first morning apparently went off without a hitch.
SCA CEO Grant Blackley has told radioinfo: “This is a test of what can be done. We have built reach with our analog and digital strategy, but something was missing.
“We know that local audiences want to laugh, get the news and be informed about things happening in their cities at breakfast time… If this works it will give a high level of personalisation, with different music choices for listeners.”
The Hit network currently has a range of stations stacked in its brand. As well as the main analog Hit station, the network now bundles five digital stations under its overall brand: Buddha, OldSkool, Easy and Urban, and the just launched Dance station.
“We have worked with the breakfast teams to make sure they are educated about what we want to achieve and are skilled up to deliver with the new system… they have to make the technology work and what they say to the audience has to be relevant,” says Blackley.
To find out more about how the system works, we spoke to SCA’s Head of Audio Operations, Dan Jackson:
“We’re using RCS and GSelector Song Balancer to point to a master log (Hit 107) for all the stations that will use rules and goals to select songs of a similar length for each station.
“If there is an anomaly, such as a long song on Hit, then the system has the ability to put in two songs, separated by a sweeper to sync to the required duration… songs come out within ten seconds of each other.”
Using the new system, the breakfast team does their show normally but when they hit the play button on Zetta it triggers the CHR music log on Hit107, and also fires off songs selected from the music universe of the other station formats.
The panel operator has a view of all stations attached and can see the time outs for each as the song plays down. The system is pre-set to flag the shortest intro so that the presenters don’t accidentally talk over one of the other songs playing on another station.
“The panel operator also has the ability to fade all songs with the fade button if that needs to be done manually,” Jackson told radioinfo.
One drawback of the system is that presenters can’t forward or back announce songs or artists, but the benefits are deemed to outweigh that downside, because breakfast is more about the personalities and the local information than full details of the music.
“Presenters can see the list of songs playing across all the stations on a Chrome Browser interface on their side of the desk, as can the producer. We worked on it with RCS to make sure that everyone had what they needed,” says Jackson.
Mike Pfeiffer from RCS worked with Jackson’s technical team to customise the system for SCA’s needs.
“We had some of the technology in place, because we had developed it for Absolute Radio, but SCA needed more because it had to sync with music directors and playout systems in different states. The decentralised workflows added an extra level of consideration when we enhanced the system.
“We had to take the FM log and make it respect the clock of each station, we did that by using our stretch and squeeze technology… We also built on the splits technology which we developed for IDs and commercial content, so when the FM log plays its song all the corresponding stations play their song.
“At first the playout support team had a lot of concerns and questions about it, they were worried about losing control, but when they saw it they could see how we solved those issues and how it kept them in control,” says Pfeiffer.
SCA intends to trial the system in Adelaide for a time to learn what listeners think about it. If it is successful it may be rolled out to other markets in the long run.
SCA’s Triple M Adelaide breakfast show is expected to also activate simulcasting within days.
Technically, this is quite an achievement for DAB, third party playout systems and the like that will open up many opportunities.
Listener wise, does a DAB+ listener want to hear the breakfast show across all platforms? If they wanted to listen to them wouldn’t they tune in to them on the main DAB+ channel?
Sounds a bit like “if you want to listen to a SCA DAB+ then YOU WILL listen to our breakfast announcers!!
I understand that this is probably a move to give sales and marketing more options to sell. But won’t this really just drive people to other options, including other platforms and competitors?
Does SCA understand that not everyone likes their breakfast announcers, hence their option to choose a SCA channel that doesn’t have them on?
Whilst technically an achievement, it's a solution looking for a problem. This is the reason why people are turning off DAB & FM and going to streaming music playlists instead. A lot of people just want to hear the music and no they don't want local news and information because that's not what commercial FM stations provide anyway, now that so many stations are being networked and newsrooms centralised resulting in local job losses.
If people want truly local news and information they will go to community radio.
If people want an overall picture of the news of the day they will go to the ABC.
Ditch this and remove at least 20% of the advertising from DAB+ radio, and a lot more people will listen. There is no need for news breaks on DAB+ music stations either.
I think this is a terrible idea. I listen to different SCA stations on DAB at home, work and in the car in Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane because I like the different content on each one and until recently, stations like Buddha and Ol' Skool had a lot fewer ads and ad breaks and no breaks for news and traffic etc.
But now, on every SCA DAB station you'll get the same breakfast show but with different music and no forward or back announcing any songs.
So Jamie Angel or Fifi Box will play Pointer Sisters I'm So Excited but on Buddha you'll hear Jamie and Fifi do their breaks followed by Lana Del Rey, on Ol' Skool it might be Outkast, on SCA Dance Calvin Harris, on SCA Easy, Smooth Operator (or other songs of similar length). So we'll get the same comps and teasers and other talk and speed breaks across every station.
That's not why I listen to Buddha and Dance and the other stations. I like the music without the constant ads, interruptions and other elements that make up a hosted breakfast show and sometimes, the things that HIT 105 or FOX do in breakfast aren't really suitable for stations like SCA Easy because it's a lot more talk for breakfast on stations that normally just play music and less ads.
SCA testing in Adelaide but it won't be long before it rolls out right across the whole country and that means finding an alternative where the same show isn't streamed across six different stations.