Scheduling Countdown Shows

In the final month of the year, many stations will be running a Year’s Top Hits Countdown. Plenty of stations run their own weekly Top Hits countdown, as well. A while back, I discovered a long-time M1 user had been scheduling a weekly countdown show by hand, searching and scheduling every song slot in a three-hour period. Took him about fifteen or twenty minutes. Aghast, I was. This task should take no more than five minutes and that’s only to re-arrange the songs into the new countdown order each week. It does require a bit of formatting set-up. This vid explains how to do it. Runs 4:24.

Watch the video on YouTube: Scheduling Countdown Shows

Set up a countdown show

This works for a weekly top 10 or top 40 countdown, or an end-of-the-year top 100.

1. Create a selection category

A selection category lets songs be in two separate categories at the same time. It’s an advanced function in the Professional edition of Music 1. See Selection Categories.

1. Open the Category menu, select New Selection and give it a name.

2. The new category appears at the bottom of the category list. Move it up to the top, so it schedules first. Its name shows in italics, so you can tell it from a regular category.

3. Put songs into it, for example by dragging all your currents into the selection category.

Click from Currents to the countdown category and back, and you see the same songs in both. If you open a song card from within the selection category, it still shows the master category that contains the song. It’s something like a ghost card: the master card is still in the Currents list.

2. Put the songs in countdown order

For a top 50 countdown, number 50 goes in ranked position number one, number 49 in ranked position number two, and so on down the list.

3. Set the category rules

Set the category to schedule in rank order only. That means no digging: it schedules the songs in 1-2-3 order down the list. You can also forget about title separation and previous day separation: this category is for special programming hours, and you don’t want to be bothered with typical rules like these.

4. Build a format clock for the countdown

You can create a clock from scratch, but it’s usually easier to clone one of your regular clocks, because those are already built with your voice tracks, stagers, jingles and spot breaks. In the clone, switch the regular categories to the countdown category: right-click the category name, select Properties and switch it to the countdown category.

Tip: with the Format Clock Item Properties window open, use the little arrow at the bottom of the window to move around the clock units, so you don’t have to close and open the window each time.

5. Add the clock to a Dayformat

Clone a Dayformat, name it Countdown, and click the countdown clock into the hour slots where it is to be used.

6. Schedule, with the rules off for the countdown

Load a schedule with the countdown Dayformat and jump to the first hour of the countdown (here 6 pm) to check the clock lineup.

You might also want Music 1 to schedule the countdown with the formatting rules turned off altogether. The songs schedule in ranked order anyway, and that’s what we want. On the Rules Enforcement screen, tell it to forget the rules, schedule the countdown category, then pause before it schedules the currents, so you can turn the rules back on.

Click the scheduling button. Music 1 schedules the countdown category, then shows the Rules Enforcement screen again: turn the rules back on and remove the pause. In the countdown hours, all the songs are scheduled. A couple of songs carry artist separation flags (those singers had more than one song in the countdown) and one has a tempo run violation, but with the rules off Music 1 didn’t stop to ask what to do in those slots. Now run the rest of the day as usual, and your countdown is in place.