Changes to a Program/Revisions From PBS
Continue to monitor the PBS Feed Advisories for any changes. Late changes to revisions often come in from PBS within a day or two of air. In these cases, our traffic team double checks these programs and their respective media attachments to make sure that our upcoming playlists are all set to acquire the correct version. What needs to be done varies on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, nothing needs to be done manually and ProTrack will adjust. In some cases, after the NOC has adjusted their attachment, we need to purge or delete our attachment and then update the upcoming airdates to “unassigned”. Sometimes it’s necessary to create a local record or force a live satellite source for air if time is too tight.
In some of these cases ProTrack and the PMM system end up fighting what you need to do manually. You may change a source to live satellite but ProTrack will change it back to media. When you need to force something in ProTrack and need to prevent it from changing, you can update the airdate in ProTrack to “other” and then enter “F” for feed or “M” for media and enter the appropriate info. This usually stops the PMM workflows from changing that particular airdate.
Due to the various scenarios that can occur as a result of these changes, it is always best to reach out to the NOC if you are unsure of how to best apply changes to your site to accommodate them.
Changes to the PBS Feed Schedule
When PBS alters a feed (typically HD01) due to a live news event, it’s important to look over any programs that will be affected by the schedule change. If any records are set to record from the source that will have schedule changes, these will most likely need to be changed. PBS typically provides these affected programs on a different satellite or feeds them earlier in the day. This may require the affected airdates to be changed to “other” and the appropriate media or satellite info be changed as well. Setting the source to “other” will prevent ProTrack from making automatic changes. As with program revision changes, the NOC will be available to help you make these changes to your system if you need assistance.
Program duration changes
PBS or other distributors will often change the duration of a program after logs have been created in ProTrack. Our traffic team uses a ProTrack tool called “Compare Air PBS Durations”. This can be found under Programs-->Program Search Menu-->Compare Air PBS Durations. This cross-references what the PBS duration is listed as versus what we have in our schedule.
Traffic runs this report just before publishing logs and it will flag any discrepancies. Note, this may not catch all discrepancies with local programming depending on when it is ingested in relation to air date. For more information on the Compare Air PBS Durations tool, click on the link below for an article on the Myers Knowledge Base.