Your feet hurt. All of your senses have been totally overstimulated. And your diet for the past several hours has consisted of hot dogs, cheese fries and soda. This can only mean one thing. You’re in Las Vegas attending another NAB Show.

How quickly the 12 months seem to go by. Soon it will be time to pack your bags, make the flight to Nevada, reconnect with old acquaintances, make new connections and ramp yourself up on the latest broadcast technology.

For RCS, this is a special event because at this year’s show we’re celebrating our 40th anniversary. Stop by and visit us as booth N2519. The birthday party will be taking place during Happy Hour on April 9th at 3 PM. But there’s more than cake and ice cream to be excited about.

A new member has joined the RCS family. Athens-based online audio tech company, Radiojar (now to become RCS Technologies Greece) has come onboard to deliver a centralized, cloud-based audio playout platform that can cohesively combine the seamless elements of broadcast radio and transition these listening experiences into other audio platforms.

Reflecting on the acquisition, Philippe Generali, RCS President/CEO said: “Complementing our recent announcements about our cloud-based scheduling, playout and disaster recovery services, this acquisition will help RCS bring an even wider range of sophisticated online broadcast tools to our customers. In the near future, using cloud-based technology, it will be possible to launch a brand-new radio service across broadcast and digital within minutes of the original idea. It’s the ultimate ‘pop-up’ radio station, if you will.”

RCS may be celebrating its 40th birthday, but its history of leadership and innovation is still forging ahead. We are thrilled to be sharing with our customers an incredible new way of giving your station the best possible low-cost disaster recovery insurance, and it’s based on our brand new service, Zetta Cloud.

Zetta Cloud’s Disaster Recovery system continuously backs up your database including audio and schedule, and then sends it to the Cloud. It’s an ongoing background process that never affects your normal workflow.

In the case of a serious event that disables your radio station, Zetta Cloud takes over, allowing you to stream your station audio directly from the Cloud to your transmitter, web stream or emergency studios. When your station is ready to resume normal service, it takes just a couple of minutes for Zetta Cloud to restore your database, with audio, to resume normal service.

Think of Zetta Cloud as a crucially important insurance policy. For while we sincerely hope that you never have to experience an event that severely disrupts your radio station, if something does go horribly wrong, you will be very glad that Zetta Cloud has your back.

by Max Davies

Our browser-based Aquira2GO product handles CRM and Sales with real time access to bookings and inventory data. The emphasis is on Sales Management with interactive forecasting, call management and configurable onscreen reporting.

The latest Forecaster features in Aquira2GO are the result of substantial collaborative work with our existing customers. In particular, we went through the entire sales workflow from the perspective of sales managers and concentrated on the weekly “Work in Progress (WIP)” meetings.

We found that these were typically being held using a combination of sales reports from Aquira and separate, manually maintained spreadsheets containing targets and forecasted sales. Needless to say, disparate spreadsheets and disconnected workflows can lead to mistakes and to inefficient reporting at all levels, so we resolved to develop a process that would centralise targets and forecasts alongside real time sales data. We wanted to do this in a way that complements current processes and enables sales managers to discuss forecasts with individual team members and update figures interactively (and instantly). We also wanted to ensure that senior management, sales managers and team members will have real time access to forecast sales information at all times.

As well as providing a one stop shop for sales pipeline information, our new Forecaster grid enables sales managers and team members to review and update progress and forecasts in real time. It also allows users to seek out potential opportunities by looking at historical sales and identifying (for example) seasonal clients who spent money last year but have not yet been approached.

Another aspect of the WIP meetings is coordinating the movements of team members and keeping an eye on the sales pipeline. Aquira2GO empowers sales managers in many ways. For example, through the provision of a sales focused Meeting Planner showing team member appointments, including a google maps* journey planner that a manager can work on together with the team member to maximise efficiency.

Additionally, Aquira2GO shows simple, colour coded tiles for all the team’s clients, each of which shows information such as Account Manager(s), Address, “Last Call:” (with details of date, purpose and outcome) and “Last Contract:” (with start and end dates). This allows team members and managers to check on the status of a client, lead or prospect at a glance.

Aquira2GO is designed to provide your sales teams with on the road access to all the information and tools they need to operate efficiently. It also ensures that sales managers are always up to date with what their team is doing and that senior management can rely on the central Aquira database to provide up to date information from a single source.

Recently our very own Nathan Mumford hosted a screencast covering just a few of the many great features of GSelector including Selector2GO and a few tips on building a better schedule.

The Country Radio Seminar (CRS) turns 50 this year, and the annual three-day gathering in Nashville promises to be both informative and educational. There will be opportunities to network with hundreds of professionals from record labels, artist management and publishing companies, and of course, other country radio stations.

The New Faces of Country Music Show and Dinner will feature Jimmie Allen, Russell Dickerson, Lindsay Ell, Lanco and Dylan Scott. These five acts were voted the favorites by country radio station employees nationwide.

Educational sessions will feature experts in broadcast engineering, music programming, promotions, sales and social media. And of course, CRS would not be complete without surprise performances and special guests.

It goes without saying, RCS will be there. Stop by our booth in the atrium, meet the RCS staff, and learn about the latest enhancements to Zetta and GSelector. You can also find out about our new GSelector Academy. You have an opportunity to ramp up your music scheduling skills by signing up for the GSelector workshop, taking place during CRS event.

This will be a two-session workshop, taking place Thursday and Friday from 9-9:50 AM. On the first day, RCS/GSelector trainers and master-users will guide you through the Library course inside the RCS Academy GSelector Certification series. You’ll leave the workshop at the end of day 1with a Library course micro-degree and credit towards becoming GSelector certified.

On day 2, you will sit with GSelector master-users and participate in a database Q&A where you’ll learn tips and tricks to make GSelector work even better for you. When you complete this workshop, you will have new music scheduling skills, contacts you can reach out to for help and resources to help keep you learning when you get back to your station. You’ll also get to meet RCS staffers Nate Mumford and Drew Bennett, and ask them anything about GSelector.

Enrollment in the CRS GSelector workshop is limited to 20 attendees. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to upgrade your music scheduling skills. Registration takes place online.

If you enjoy the workshop, you may want to take the plunge and get certified. GSelector Certification is a self-paced, online course for individuals with basic to advanced knowledge of music scheduling using GSelector. During this course, students learn the essential skills needed to become GSelector Certified and earn the RCS-GSC certification designation. GSelector Certification covers each section of the software in detail and follows sound music scheduling principles that give our users the tools they need to become true experts at music scheduling.

How did you get started in radio? Chances are that you hung around a station, then watched and learned from other people. But Drew Bennett, National Sales Manager of Scheduling Products at RCS says there are two things wrong with that approach. “First, it’s possible that the people you learned from didn’t know what they were doing. Second, if they did know, they might not tell you because they wanted to have the edge.”

Meaningful, formalized education in the broadcast industry has always been hard to come by. That’s why RCS has launched RCS Academy, a way for you to learn about GSelector, Zetta and Aquira, and get certified for what you know.

As Bennett explains, you don’t even need to leave home: “The courses are online and self-paced. They’re broken down into segments with an exam on each. Once you pass, you earn a micro-degree. For example, when you master the library section of GSelector, you get a library badge and micro-degree. When you have completed all the chapters, you can take the final exam. If you pass, you’re certified.” The cost for online courses ranges from $300-$600.

Bennett adds that there are numerous benefits to certification. You can order a diploma to hang on your wall, a lapel pin, and digital badge that can be used on professional sites such as LinkedIn. Your name and contact info are also listed in the RCS directory of ‘Super Users’, where potential employers can seek you out.

RCS Academy is rolling out in 2019. By the end of the first quarter, the GSelector course will be available online. That will be followed by comparable online courses on Zetta and Aquira. The next step will be moving the program to college campuses, as Bennett explains: “These courses will also be available for college credit. Our first campus will be Texas A&M in College Station, Texas, and we will continue to expand to other schools.” He adds that each college will determine the tuition fees for the courses.