When News Breaks ... It Shouldn’t Sound Broken

– User Report: 25-Seven System’s Audio Time Manager Helps News Radio 990 KTMS in Santa Barbara Solve Complex Timing Issues –

Santa Barbara– (January 20, 2006) – 25-Seven Systems, Inc., specializing in audio technologies for more efficient and profitable radio operations, uses feedback from clients to help make its award-winning Audio Time Manager™ a better tool for broadcasters.

Here is a User Report filed by Jeff K. Williams, Program Director with Clear Channel Radio, including KTMS and KIST-AM in Santa Barbara, KSMA in Santa Maria and KVEC San Luis Obispo:

One thing many News-Talk stations have a hard time controlling is the timing of live news and important information. How many times have we had the infamous news conference that was supposed to last only 25 minutes, but went twice as long and spanned over the top of the hour? How about the event that started earlier than expected? These kinds of unplanned events leave us scrambling to keep our air sounding professional. Thanks to 25-Seven Systems’ Audio Time Manager, news can break but doesn’t have to sound broken.

About six months ago, News Radio 990 KTMS in Santa Barbara was able to solve complex timing issues by using one of 25-Seven Systems’ first Audio Time Managers, and we are very happy with how useful an audio tool this is. KTMS carries a lot of network programming while inserting produced local content like news, traffic and weather. Often, we have the dilemma where the local content needs to go long, but we still need to get into a network show smoothly and seamlessly, and carry our normal spot load.

For example, sometimes traffic reports that are expected to run around 45 seconds need to go to over a minute because of a highway closure or accident. With Audio Time Manager, our board op is able to let important local content, like extended traffic reports go long, simply by pushing two buttons: the big Record button gets pressed when we’re supposed to return to the network, then, once the traffic has ended, the operator just presses Play. The network show starts slightly delayed, and Audio Time Manager works away to catch up to real time. The process is completely seamless and without audio artifacts.

Another great example of the unit’s flexibility is during news conferences where you just need to slip in a legal ID. One thing listeners find most disturbing is doing an ID on top of a news conference while cutting out an important question or response, or (especially in long conferences), not describing what the news conference is about. Trust me, I hear from the listeners when we step on top of a feed to ID it. With Audio Time Manager, all the operator does is listen for the right transition in the conference, hit the REC button, air the legal ID and press Play, picking up where we left off with no loss of content.

Recently there was a Presidential address that was scheduled to take place during our morning drive period. Despite our news provider’s best efforts to communicate to the affiliates, the address started early. My producer was smart in monitoring the network feed during a local commercial break, heard the President step up to the podium, pressed the record button on the Audio Time Manager and smoothly joined the address at the end of the local break. No abrupt dumping out of a commercial, no “make good” to tell traffic about, and the press conference still aired live, in its entirety and ended on time.

This style of time management makes our station sound better, smoother and full of the content our listeners expect. Plus, with the care 25-Seven has given to how the time is gained, the audio quality is completely seamless: you don’t hear pitch changes, glitches, or the usual chipmunk sound we’ve heard on cheap audio editing systems. During the set up of our unit, we’ve found that 12% (that’s over seven minutes per hour) time compression is not detectable, and the unit really transitions well when it catches up to moment of live programming.

Installation was really easy and quick: we simply took an output from one of our router sources, fed it to the Audio Time Manager and routed its audio output to one of the modules on our console. Soft keys on the front of the unit let us input current time, set audio levels and the default percentage of time compression. In this digital age, 25- Seven has set the unit to work with balanced analog or digital (AES) plants, and provides an Ethernet connection to work within your computer network.

Thanks to the commitment of the engineers of 25-Seven Systems, we have been offered software and user upgrades that I have not been able to sample at the time of this writing. However, they have been completely open to suggestions from the field. When I was first introduced to this company at the 2004 NAB in Las Vegas, they were all ears. By the time we received our unit I could tell they do indeed listen to users, and have left us more room to grow with our existing unit. I’m looking forward to setting it up to work with our on-air automation system with the system’s built in GPIO, and to upgrading to sample the new web interface, and seeing what else they’ve cooked up for this unique and useful tool.

About Audio Time Manager
Audio Time Manager allows broadcasters to create extra breaks wherever they are needed, eliminate back-timing hassles into a network feed, or introduce random starting events like press conferences, without the awkward talk up. Stations can insert ID’s, commentary or additional inventory without compromising sound quality or sacrificing content. Audio Time Manager’s proprietary time compression algorithms and Time/Rate Management Calculator™ (TRMC) squeeze more time and content out of each broadcast day.

About 25-Seven Systems
Launched in 2003, 25-Seven Systems, Inc. (www.25-seven.com) specializes in audio technologies for more efficient and profitable radio operations. 25-Seven Systems radio and audio engineering and product talent develops practical solutions to meet the requirements of radio stations and networks. The core company personnel – Geoff Steadman, Derek Pilkington, Rick Sawyer, Barry Blesser and Dick Pierce – have extensive radio industry experience and a significant intellectual property portfolio that is applied to 25-Seven products.

25-Seven Systems, 25-Seven Systems logo, Audio Time Manager and Time/Rate Management Calculator are trademarks of 25-Seven Systems, Inc. Other trademarks may be property of their respective owners.

# # #

You can download a PDF version of this press release

Return to the list of press releases.