Alex Meng (second from right) takes a snap with the music channel managers at Radio Zhejiang
Welcome to the Chinese province of Zhejiang, home to 56 million people and boasting a GDP in 2016 of CNY4.6 trillion (more than US$700 billion).
In broadcasting, Zhejiang Media Group is the radio and television power house. One of its constituent parts is Radio Zhejiang, offering eight different radio channels.
As with all radio stations in China, Radio Zhejiang is state owned, but nevertheless, most of the company’s revenue comes from traditional spot advertising.
In 2016, RCS China was successful in convincing Radio Zhejiang’s “Music Channel” to switch to the latest RCS software – Gelector and Zetta – to be used for the channel’s music scheduling and playback needs.
After getting all our paperwork approved, we began our system installation in July last year and the Radio Zhejiang Music Channel went into trial operation in early September. So far, this procedure and timescale was pretty much standard for a Chinese radio station. But, what came after, nearly turned this whole project upside down.
Radio Zhejiang engineers take a close look at the program specs
Though the programming department was quite happy with our system, Radio Zhejiang’s engineering department decided to initiate what I believe was the most stringent system acceptance process that I’ve seen over the last 15 years operating in China. Every aspect of our system, from the audio specifications, network communication and even computers’ magnetic interference factors were tested by the Radio Zhejiang technical team. After several months of testing all aspects of our system, requiring our engineers to be onsite several times, our system was accepted by the group.
Taking RCS for a test drive
Zetta in the driver’s seat
Though the process was painful at the time, I am happy to say that if we could pass these stringent tests at Radio Zhejiang, RCS China will be successful in any other radio station in China. Over the process, we also got to learn a lot about what the Chinese engineers viewed as important with a radio playout system and it is very pleasing to know that our system – Zetta – matched all the criteria with brilliant results.
Radio Zhejiang Music Channel is considered one of the top five Provincial music radio stations in China, so we are very happy that this very important Chinese station uses the world’s best scheduling and playback system: GSelector and Zetta!
Terri Li of RCS China with happy Radio Zhejiang users.