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 breaks you have a few options.

Automation System

The first is to review whether or not your AutomationSystem has a “must fill” satellite mode where it will automatically substitute/insert material for times when the material is invalid/missing. The AutomationSystem 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 AutomationSystem is closer to the problem, so it can best handle the solution.

Automatic Must Fill

If your AutomationSystem does not have the capability to automatically "fill dead time" (or you do not wish to use your Automation_Systems ability to solve this problem), you can leverage the built in “must fill” capability. RadioTraffic can automatically place designated spots in designated avails, or you can manually make fill spots available for placement on your logs.

Setting Up Automatic Fill

Preparing copy:

• Create a customer named “Fill” (optional - see best practices below).
• Open 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 need to prepare your logs so that the necessary avails are flagged as needing to be filled (must fill).

• Open the Log.
• Right click on an avail and select the "Modify" tool:
  
  
  
• Enable the "Must Fill" option.
  
  
  
• Repeat for each avail that must be completely filled.

Whenever you are working your log, you can either manually place material in the must fill avails from the bump or make good lists or leave these alone and 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).




Best Practices:

• Use as many PSAs and promos as possible for must fill you can. Variety will produce better results.
• Try not to use copy from an active contract. Using copy from an active contract as must fill will likely produce unexpected results.
• In the rare case that you need to use your active contracts as must fill material, consider reducing the length or number of avails in your logs. If you chose to use copy from an active contract, be sure to scatter the must fill copy across multiple customers.

Bonus Material

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 non-billing Contracts 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. The more spots that exist on the make good list, the longer it will take to load the logs.