The best automation system you've used???

What is everyone's favorite automation system that you've used?

I personally like the STORQ Automation from Waitt Radio (now Dial Global). It's simple drag and drop in a Windows format, and not big blocks of red and green.

Automation Sucks......it takes jobs away from those of us who would like to do what we grew up listening to.Radio today compared to the 60's and 70' is a joke.You can thank the Clinton administration,FCC and a Republican Congress and House for that one.Just thank god the DOJ got involved and kept all those greedy bastards from getting monopolies.

I agree with RyanT, the STORQ system is the best I've worked with. I've used Dalet, Digital Jukebox and BSI Simian at other stops and I thought the STORQ system was the easiest to master and the most user friendly.

Automation is simply a tool to do the job. It can be used to replace jocks, but used properly, it takes the mundane crap out of the job and allows you to concentrate on content. There is no way I would want to go back to using carts, CD's, 45's, albums and reel to reel tape.

Gotta say the "Prophet" system is pretty amazing as to what you can do with it---IF you know what you're doing. "Maestro" is pretty good as well. "Prophet" ain't cheap but man does it go the job very very nicely.....even if you're
live this is a gem of a system to work with!



Your Spokane Radio Pal.......

Yep. Automation sucks. Stale radio. ...Radio is pretty much broken though. It'd be a lot fresher and more exciting if the jocks were pulling music and playing from the source. Ditch the lame liners, and stop playing the same 500 oldies over and over again. Your audience is smarter than that.

Ever been a station manager? I owned/managed 4 stations (not in Montana) for 12 years.

The whineist, laziest, most drug infested, creepy, degenrate, sex crazed people EVER.... worked for me. I HAPPILY fired every one of them!

Specs Howard Broadcasting School told me, "these people were his BEST CLASS." BS!

Automation solved that problem VERY well.

No begging Specs Howard for "the best students (they were all uneducated monkeys, anyway). No begging for more days off, no asking for a raise, borrowing from the next paycheck, no hung over drunks, no faking sickness, no "I have to go to my mom's funeral on the other side of the state" (LYING F___ - (TRUE STORY)...My wife wanted to send flowers, but the funeral home said, "Mrs Alexander isn't dead! I saw her in the supermarket this morning!"

I LOVE automation, especially SATELLITE automation. I ran 4 stations, one was a hundred miles away - from a room a block away from my
home!

I can make it sound BETTER that those whiney idiots, LIVE!! The satellite never misponounces the names of the people who sing the songs.

There, I feel better, now. I retired in 1985. LIFE is wonderful!!

Thanks for listening!

Prias - And it's thanks to ppl just like you that radio is in the fine state its in today. Way to make a bunch of money, ruin the industry then leave.

You are WELCOME!!!

I'm just a little guy, and I sold in 1985, BEFORE the mess Clear Channel is making. Stations were very overvalued then.

No apology. Owning a station was my dream since being a kid! God Bless America! My story was some skill and some being at the right place at the right time.

wheredeejaysgotodie, let me tell you....I'm REALLY enjoying being retired. The station payout has supported me 25 years, put my kids through college, and allowed me to give (nearly) half to charity.

I earned it. The guy I bought 1 station from was a swindler. Had he lived (died of a heart attack) he would have surely been in prison. I cleaned up HIS mess, and added 3 stations, and 2 construction permits.

Nobody is stopping YOU! You buy a station an you can do the SAME THING.

Um....maybe not. I made alot more in a shorter tine buying and selling 2 funeral homes I bought with the radio money.

Tell me you wouldn't!! I sincerely wish you the very best.

You sound like a difficult man to work for and I doubt your automation sounded warm and fuzzy. Perhaps your employees needed guidance instead of criticism. And...if you made all this money, you should have given raises at the time and less to charity. Besides, who has lied about a funeral in order to attend a baseball game. It's the American way.

Judging from YOUR post, maybe you shold be LIEman!

Go ahead and doubt all you like. I was merely commenting from my experience on the advantages of automation, as opposed to LIVE lying, lazy, drug infested Specs Howard grads.

I hope that there is a qualified mental health professional taking care of you.

Me difficult? Nope. My daughters are quite spoiled. How about the PAY ADVANCES we gave to lots of these losers- that they mostly FAILED to pay back?

Guidance? To tell the truth?

This is how radio works; People who DO THEIR JOB WELL get raises - and AFTER the raise I give ME!

Lying is wrong. This liar was very wrong. I was the boss and the station owner.. I decide. HE lost.

PS "Fryman"...Whatever you are "frying" (MickeyD's??) When YOU get a job YOU can determine how to spend YOUR money, meanwhile, with all due respect, get out of my way!

I'm retired so I can respond all day. If YOU are working, it figures that you'd be wasting time on the internet instead of doing your job. I love satellite automation.

Maybe YOU should BUY a station and see how mmmbenevolant YOU would be.

Thanks.

You do seem like you would be a hands-on-boss but don't you agree that for the most part, that the majority of your employees were earnest, sincere, hard working people who wanted to excel in the radio biz? And did you throw a nice Christmas party with great food (perhaps some home cut fries to go with the steaks), give a nice yearly Christmas bonus, and share a few laughs and guffaws with the guys? How about dress? Did you have a casual or "blue jeans" Friday? Did you have free coffee at your station?

Ok, I'll bite (fryman humor).

You asked;
don't you agree that for the most part (ed; NOTE, I LOVE the qualifiers because you know you re on shaky ground)... the majority of your employees were earnest, sincere, hard working people who wanted to excel in the radio biz?

My answer...."No!" They were ALL loafers. Even though the sales staff could realistically earn a thousand dollars weekly (this was in the late 70's - when that was a fortune) I caught a salesman in a bar (when he was supposed to be with a client).

You asked, And did you throw a nice Christmas party with great food (perhaps some home cut fries to go with the steaks), These gorillas wouldn't have appreciated steak (bananas, maybe) - but certainly pizza at the party and (traded) gift certificates. We sold in 1985 - so I really remember little about this as I'm over 200 miles, a few other bought/sold business, and lots of my family's enjoyment away from that, now.

You asked....
...give a nice yearly Christmas bonus, (to my wife and I?... of course!) and share a few laughs and guffaws with the guys? Sure,, I had to treat each of them like a 4 year old kid.

You asked...
How about dress? Did you have a casual or "blue jeans" Friday? NEVER! The slobs would have probably objected to use of deoderant. I'm NOT their mommy.

you asked.....
Did you have free coffee at your station? O yes. Free coffee woke up these losers just enough to work.

You know, even wgn in Chicago TODAY, doesn't do alot of what you suggested. My conscience is very clear. I was a really good person to work for.

By the way, thanks for your concern. I consider the present owner/manager of those stations a much meaner, more selfish guy that I EVER thought of being.

Also, most of the equipment I sold him in 1985 is still in use.

PS There are a few other owners on radio-info. To be FAIR - you should ask them the same questions. Alot of these guys are struggling. We only struggled the first couple of years, then we had 10+ years of gravy. Look up "Josh" and ask HIM..

snakemao said:

Automation Sucks......it takes jobs away from those of us who would like to do what we grew up listening to.Radio today compared to the 60's and 70' is a joke.You can thank the Clinton administration,FCC and a Republican Congress and House for that one.Just thank god the DOJ got involved and kept all those greedy bastards from getting monopolies.

Click to expand...

If GOOD automation was around in the 60's and 70's what makes you think that they wouldn't have used it then? I used to, and still do, hate the graveyard shift. Automation is great for that!

Do any of your former employees (those lazy loafers) still keep in contact with you? They probably liked you in their own way but were intimidated by your style. I have a feeling that you were a Sgt. Snorkle and the employees were Beetle Baileys.

Wow!

Interesting comments from all involved.

I don't hit the Montana board very often, but thought I would offer my comments.

I ran across some of the issues that Prasis did when I was a PD in Kalispell many years ago.

Automation works well in some circumstances, and having someone decent doing a live broadcast does well in smaller markets too, in my opinion. The trick is finding that decent person which will do what is needed, and be responsible.

I remember going in sick, doing my shift, though spreading the germs to the other jocks, when I was in Kalispell. We had a good group of jocks in my tenure, which was 5 years, along with the other staff, and did what was needed to produce a quality product. Maybe things have changed in the past 20 years or so, but I still think there are responsible kids coming out of the broadcasting schools. This is my opinion and your mileage may vary.

Certainly, it is cheaper to go to automation. My own Internet station is fully automated, though I do try to keep it fresh as much as possible with changes to imaging and other programming.

By the way, the system I use for LMTTRR is Station Playlist. It works almost flawlessly, though when finances dictate, we may go to Rivendell on a Linux system. The software is free, but really requires a very good sound card, thus supplanting the cost of automation software. Still it is a great system.

nitnitr said:

Wow!

Interesting comments from all involved.

I don't hit the Montana board very often, but thought I would offer my comments.

I ran across some of the issues that Prasis did when I was a PD in Kalispell many years ago.

Click to expand...

ditto for me to, never been on Montana before...but

I have to agree with Prasis, the quality of people in this business has deteriorated over the years, along with that, the desire on a lot of levels to put up with them. I'm glad he did all right, It would be better for the industry in general, if we could return to those days!

Like some of the others, I don't visit the Montana board often. The thread caught my eye because I used to work at a company that provided music and programming for automated radio stations.

I know that many of those stations that were clients of the company I worked for were all automated -- others were only partly automated. I think deregulation had more to do with killing jobs in the radio industry (along with the technology that made combining stations' operations into 'clusters' feasible) than automation ever did.

All the people I worked with and for -- including all my bosses -- had radio backgrounds (some were former airstaff, others had management backgrounds), and they all were competent and good workers.

RyanT said:

What is everyone's favorite automation system that you've used?

I personally like the STORQ Automation from Waitt Radio (now Dial Global). It's simple drag and drop in a Windows format, and not big blocks of red and green.

Click to expand...

STORQ! I used it's predecessor, Airforce/Air Traffic Control at KNLV 103.9 Ord Nebraska... VERY easy to learn, very user friendly.

I currently use AudioVault.. not bad, not too hard to learn.. has a few quirks, not as many quirks as Simian!!

I've used Simian from BSI and dos based The Phantom from RDS.. what festering piles of junk.

Audiovault Flex. I have used Audiovault since the AV100 Hardware days. It is the only system right now that is adding tons of features (useful ones) with each software iteration. I love the latest version. Outside of AV, I would have to say NexGen is my next choice.

I know people that use MediaTouch and they complain about problems that they won't fix, just offer workarounds. That wouldn't work for me.

Prais said:

Ever been a station manager? I owned/managed 4 stations (not in Montana) for 12 years.

The whineist, laziest, most drug infested, creepy, degenrate, sex crazed people EVER.... worked for me. I HAPPILY fired every one of them!

Specs Howard Broadcasting School told me, "these people were his BEST CLASS." BS!

Automation solved that problem VERY well.

No begging Specs Howard for "the best students (they were all uneducated monkeys, anyway). No begging for more days off, no asking for a raise, borrowing from the next paycheck, no hung over drunks, no faking sickness, no "I have to go to my mom's funeral on the other side of the state" (LYING F___ - (TRUE STORY)...My wife wanted to send flowers, but the funeral home said, "Mrs Alexander isn't dead! I saw her in the supermarket this morning!"

I LOVE automation, especially SATELLITE automation. I ran 4 stations, one was a hundred miles away - from a room a block away from my
home!

I can make it sound BETTER that those whiney idiots, LIVE!! The satellite never misponounces the names of the people who sing the songs.

There, I feel better, now. I retired in 1985. LIFE is wonderful!!

Thanks for listening!

Click to expand...

MMM YOU HIRED THEM....so you are to blame, not them....if you could not control your station employees while on the air, should have hired someone else!!!

Thanks for posting...it shows how some owners/managers do not know what the hell they were/are doing!