Must Fill
If you are in a satellite operation scenario where it’s possible that you don’t have enough spots to cover the “required filled breaks”, you have a few options. The first is to review whether or not your automation system has a “must fill” satellite mode where it will automatically substitute/insert material for times when the material is invalid/missing. The automation system knows the exact length of the spots, the appropriate amount of time to be filled and can possibly do this without using any additional material by using stretch/squeeze capabilities. The automation system is closer to the problem, so it can best handle the solution.
If your automation system does not have this capability (or you do not wish to use your automation systems ability to solve this problem), you can use the “must fill” capabilities. This will require that you do the following:
- On the “Fill” Customer, add any and all Copy (cart #’s) that you want to use as must fill material. Normally this will be PSA’s, promos, liners, jingles, zingers, etc. Be sure to have material that is appropriate for your avail type operations (60, 30, 15, 10, 5, etc.). These pieces of Copy and associated cart numbers do not need to be unique across all of your Customers. We are just placing all of them on the “Fill” Customer for ease of operations and spot management. Be sure to also check (enabled) the “Usable by MUSTFILL.” check box on each piece of Copy.
- You will update your formats/templates through the template editor so that the necessary avails are flagged as needing to be filled (must fill).
- Whenever you are working your Log, you can either manually place material in the must fill avails or leverage the automatic must fill processing that will occur whenever you lock the Log. This process will randomly pull (and recycle) from the “fill list” to fill as much of the “must fill” avails as possible (limited based on length of Copy).
- Note: If you “reverse a Log”, these items will also be removed providing the ability for you to place additional spots in these avails.
If you desire to have more control over the placement of the material, you’ll need to treat this material as “bonus”. To do this, you’ll create additional
Contracts at $0 to generate the spots that can be used. Determine the number of spots you’ll think you’ll need so that the material is available in the bump list and/or make good list. It is possible to “pre-load” the make good list with this material by entering a
Contract in the (slight) past; doing so will automatically move the spots for prior days into the make good list. Periodically, these extra (“bonus”) spots will need to be cleaned up and the “bonus”
Contracts might need to be adjusted based on actual need.