We’re kicking off 2024 with an exciting new live video: The RCS Challenge. What is the RCS Challenge? As quick as you can (30 minutes), build an entirely new radio station from scratch. Starting with music and priority lists in GSelector, integrate your new station with Zetta, then replicate that to Zetta Cloud and finally, live playout in Revma. Let’s start by breaking down the role of each RCS software and how they help to build a new station.
First, you want to identify what type of station you want. In this example, we wanted to take existing songs and build a new Classic Rock / Classic Hits, era based “Core Song” station. However, you can easily use the Advanced Search to filter by Artist and then build a new station surrounding a core artist’s catalogue when they release a new album. For our “Era Core Song” station, we isolated songs and using the Multi-Song Changer, we assigned Station Content: “Core Songs” and “Non-Core Songs.” Users can also see their newly created breakdowns within the Goals | Balance | Attributes subtabs.
With our newly isolated songs created, we replicate the same behavior with Links and created additional sub-Categories: “Core Song” and “Non-Core Song.” Now we can build our priority lists, adding some basic goals and rules, as well as adding the Content Rule, in which we define one GSelector Category Group to rotate two Categories, while respecting that 65% – 80% of each hour must be a “Core Song.” And we achieved those numbers by revisiting the specific turnovers within Goals | Balance | Attributes. Finally, we created and assigned our Clocks and scheduled a log.
One important note: if you subscribe to RCS research, why not include your research as part of your scheduling criteria? In this video, we highlighted both Mediabase and Media Monitors metrics to incorporate into your everyday priority list.
Since Zetta is 100% integrated with GSelector, it’s easy and quick to build a station in GSelector and simply see all your work replicated instantly on the Zetta side. Between activating songs, assigning attributes, and scheduling a log, Zetta plays a straightforward role when you’re building a station. Once everything is ready to go in Zetta, we can utilize RCS’s Site Replication to duplicate all your work into Zetta Cloud.
Zetta Cloud:
Once we have all the GSelector and Zetta pieces ready to go, we can focus our attention to Zetta Cloud and review our newly created station. Not only can we see new assets and logs, but now we can add an encoder / sequencer to our station, improve it by incorporating Revma for further streaming distribution, then we sync the log and click play.
Revma, RCS’s Content Delivery Network (CDN), also plays a simple but significant role in streaming our new station. If we wanted to spin up a new temporary station, by streaming, we can include the online stream on your station’s website, app, or wherever output of your choosing because Zetta Cloud’s encoder directly ties into Revma’s stream, with optional bit rates, allowing for additional flexibility. We can convert Zetta Cloud’s encoder from an Icecast Server to Icecast Client, choose your format and bit rate, save your mounting point information and we’re ready to stream.
As you can see from The RCS Challenge, as long as you have a vision and goals for your new station, we can spin up a brand new radio station in 30 minutes – it’s that simple!
If you’re for additional learning resources, don’t forget to check out past videos in our RCS Live Archive here. There’s fantastic how to’s and product introduction videos, like our new AudioDisplay RDS campaign software . There’s also the RCS Academy and more.