If a log problem is spotted, it can be corrected by the people best equipped to understand the ramifications. Is this combining traffic with MCR or creating a more natural broadcast operations department? It is arguable that from a business perspective, this is a potential way to improve operations. This raises many questions that are not so obvious. This is not just window dressing, because who can better judge if a spot is the right one? Indeed who can gauge a program to be sure it matches the log? The schedule starts in traffic, and in this era, MCR can be run entirely from (or even on) IT hardware, eliminating the need for a different type of technical space for MCR. One of my clients is actively considering what might seem counterintuitive - eliminating master control as a department and moving it into the traffic department. I recognize that this might seem a bit contrived, but as we move further into file-based workflow, such issues beg for human solutions. Consider for a moment an error in the file domain, which might render content at best embarrassing. But someone still needs to take responsibility to make sure the content has been reviewed and noted as correct and ready for air. In an era where file-based workflow is becoming mainstream, one might conjecture that passing metadata directly to automation and traffic will take away a primary function of the MCR operator. Content must be ingested and trimmed before it is used for air. For the most part, exceptions and late additions to the schedule make unattended operation risky, or perhaps less than a career-enhancing decision. It is fair to ask why many stations have not gone to lights out, unmanned operations.

Though you could technically plug in an RS-422 control panel to almost any server and get a clip (spot) to play, the likelihood is that either a full-blown automation system, or a simple playlist manager, is used to cue up spots and play them to air. There are no control panels for button pushers to interact with.

At some level, automation is required to play back a server, essentially without exception. In virtually every station, spots are stored on a server, even if long-form content is still played from videotape. We don't get spots on videotape much anymore either, because they are often delivered electronically to an IT-based server in the station, which then either moves the content (essence and metadata) to the air server via FTP, or perhaps plays it out for ingest in the server. videotape, or if I dare date myself, certainly not the film chains used for much of the broadcast content in the early decades of television broadcasting. Today, a multichannel master control may not have “moving parts,” i.e.

Tv mcr ch timetag