Wide Orbit

Two big players in Indianapolis have switched or are getting ready to switch automation systems from AudioVAULT to Wide Orbit. One company is excited about it... the other has a vocal air staff that hates Wide Orbit because, at least from what I'm hearing, they haven't been properly trained on the system.

I work at a University that teaches the AudioVAULT automation software partly because it was the system that our students were likely to use when they get that first job in the local market out of college. The sudden switch to Wide Orbit is causing us to sit up and take notice.

I've had my own issues with the BE support staff on a number of occasions... I'm curious what everybody else thinks. Are you using Wide Orbit right now or have you switched? Do you like it? What are its strengths? Weaknesses?

Thanks!
JB

We just swapped to WO from AV and so far I like allot of the new feature sets, there are many MANY things that AV would not do well that WO dose. But like any system it has its quirks and since they are still in active development adding features you come up the the occasional bug. Their support has been great!

If your university has the money, and you like Wide Orbit, then you could switch.

But your students should know more than one automation system if they want to have a career in radio. There are 3 iHeartMedia (Clear Channel) stations in Indianapolis. The vast majority of those stations use NexGen (maybe RCS) for the digital systems. So what if your students get a job at one of the CC stations? Or the second job they get outside the market uses Dalet? They will have to learn something different.

All you can really do is make sure your program has students working with an automation system that has good industry penetration. There are positives and negatives with all of the leading systems out there. The main operator interfaces all are starting to look alike.

WO is the latest incarnation of the original Scott Studios SS system (SS 16 DOS then SS32 Windows and onward after Scott sold out)....IF Google didn't screw the programming and software, using SS to me was a lot easier than AV....AV took more networking than SS....I liked the Dispatch system and getting help from Scott was always easier than getting thru to BE's AV support...(found the way to get help was claim you had an off air situation.....even if you werent!! Major market stations sometimes would not get callback for 4-6 hours unless they claimed off air!!)...

Scott/WO took less resources to run....and after working with it, I liked it better than NexGen (I was trained on Prophet CFS and then worked with NexGen V1)...AV is still a good system and in use by several CBS clusters....If you dont count the CC stations, I think you would find Scott/WO the more widely used one....It a tough call these days though (like those who use ZARA who love it; especially the free version)

How about a list of what systems are in widespread use, for those of us who don't work directly in radio on a day-to-day basis?
What are students likely to encounter in the real world?

Well the big ones would be..
-Audio Vault
-Wide Orbit/Scott Studios
- Zetta/NextGen
- Enco / DAD

and to a lesser extent in smaller markets you will see.

- BSI Simian
- OMT iMedia Touch
- SAM Broadcaster
-Station Playlist

And if your students go to work for Cumulus, they will more than likely run into BSI Simian or Opt-X since Cumulus owns BSI.

And I believe NexGen is owned (or at least controlled) by Clear Channel, and nearly all of their stations use that.

NexGen is under the RCS brand name....(the radio scheduling software)....CC bought what it could to bring it all under one umbrella....surprised they didnt buy any transmitter or console maker....